M  dir.  Pol  vs K 


U  A 


TT 


The 


Jews  in  Poland 


Official  Reports  of 

The  American  and  British  Investigating  Missions 


1.  The  Morgenthau  Report 

2.  The  Jadwin  and  Johnson  Report 

3.  Letter  of  Sir  H.  Rumbold 

4.  The  Samuel  Report 

5.  The  White  Report 

6.  Miscellaneous  Letters 

7.  The  Situation 

8.  The  Minority  Rights  Treaty 


Published  in  order  to  bring  about  a  better  understanding  of  the 
necessity  for  honest  and  constructive  effort  in  solving  a  problem 
that  is  only  made  more  difficult  by  attacks  and  recriminations. 


The  National  Polish  Committee  of  America 

1214  North  Ashland  Ave.,  Chicago,  Ill. 


THE  JEWS  IN  POLAND 


OFFICIAL  REPORTS  OF 

The  American  and  British  Investigating  Missons 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

» 

Preface  ........ 

Letters  of  Transmittal — American  Report 

The  Morgenthau  Report  .  ...  . 

The  Jadwin  and  Johnson  Report  ... 

An  Excerpt  from  the  Jadwin-Johnson  Report 

Letter  of  Transmittal — British  Report  (Sir  H.  Rumbold) 

The  Samuel  Report  -  -  -  - 

The  Captain  Wright  Report  .... 

Typical  Hymns  of  Hate  - 

The  Truth?  ------- 

The  Situation  -  ...... 

The  Polish  Treaty  ------ 


Page 

2 

3 

4 
1  1 
18 
19 
22 
33 
49 

55 

56 
61 


THE  NATIONAL  POLISH  COMMITTEE  OF  AMERICA 

1214  North  Ashland  Avenue,  Chicago,  Ill. 


PREFACE 


THIS  booklet,  containing  the  complete  reports  of  the  American  and  Brit¬ 
ish  Missions  to  Poland,  is  published  in  order  to  bring  about  a  better 
understanding  of  the  necessity  for  honest  and  constructive  effort  m 
solving  a  problem  that  is  only  made  more  difficult  by  attacks  and  recrimina¬ 
tions.  These  reports  should  be  studied  carefully  by  the  reader.  Unfortun¬ 
ately  certain  portions  of  the  Morgenthau  Report  and  a  great  deal  of  the 
Samuel  Report  have  been  used  by  certain  groups  of  propagandists  in  a 
manner  that  must  have  been  distressing  at  least  to  Mr.  Morgenthau.  There¬ 
fore,  it  was  felt  to  be  a  duty  to  have  all  the  reports  published  in  full,  that 
they  might  be  studied  and  compared  in  fairness  to  the  question  itself. 

*  Poles  and  Jews  must  live  together  in  Poland.  No  race  or  religion  can 
claim  a  monopoly  of  virtue.  If  certain  elements  of  the  Polish  population 
have  at  times  apparently  persecuted  the  Jews,  perhaps  there  was  some  real 
reason  for  their  antagonism.  A  study  of  these  Reports  may  give  some  of 
the  reasons  for  such  periodic  outbreaks.  Moreover,  a  study  of  these  Reports 
cannot  fail  to  result  in  complete  vindication  of  the  Polish  Government.  So 
far  as  the  Polish  people  have  been  concerned,  in  Poland  proper,  “eighteen 
Jews  lost  their  lives,”  according  to  the  British  Minister  to  Poland.  It  is  diffi¬ 
cult  to  indict  a  people  on  the  record  made  by  groups  of  outlaw  soldiery  on 
an  active  front. 

Examples  of  inflammatory  propaganda  are  quoted  in  this  booklet.  These 
are  typical,  and  no  effort  was  made  to  pick  out  the  most  violent.  Every 
newspaper  reader  is  familiar  with  this  propaganda,  and  its  constant  repetition 
has  won  many  to  an  unjustified  hatred  of  the  Polish  people.  It  is  often  for¬ 
gotten  that  these  voices  carry  far,  and  that  the  impression  made  upon  the 
Pole  fighting  for  his  country  is  not  always  consistent  with  perpetual  peace  and 
harmony  between  this  Pole  and  his  Jewish  neighbor  in  Poland. 

Violence  of  expression,  the  waging  of  bitter  anti-Polish  propaganda  in 
the  United  States,  picketing  the  Polish  Legation,  reporting  in  Hearst  news¬ 
papers  “pogrom”  atrocities  laid  to  Poles  in  towns  still  many  miles  east  of 
the  Russian  military  front,  “mourning”  parades,  delegations  to  the  President 
.  .  .  .  all  these  organized  and  well  financed  endeavors  to  assist  Jewry  by  de¬ 
stroying  the  dearly  won  freedom  of  Poland.  .  .  .are  the  most  deadly  threats 
to  the  Jews  of  Poland,  and  draw  a  bitter  line  of  cleavage  between  Jew  and 
Pole  when  it  seems  that  the  moderate  elements  are  joining  together  in  a 
common  effort  to  improve  the  relations  of  those  peoples  who  had  decades 
ago  lived  together  in  mutual  respect  and  harmony.  Such  relentless  antago¬ 
nism  as  was  shown  in  certain  of  the  Yiddish  press  that  condemned  Morgen¬ 
thau  because  he  did  not  report  more  killed  than  the  facts  allowed,  acts  like 
salt  on  old  wounds. 

There  must  be  a  rapprochement  between  Poles  and  Jews  in  Poland. 
There  never  can  be  until  the  circumstances  of  their  modes  of  living  and  think¬ 
ing  are  understood ;  until  serious  men  give  serious  thought  and  work  without 
bitterness  toward  the  solution  of  an  undeniable  problem.  It  is  to  help 
toward  this  solution  that  this  booklet  is  published. 


The  Reports 

of  the 

AMERICAN  MISSION 


LETTERS  OF  TRANSMITTAL 


To  the  Senate : 

I  transmit  herewith  a  report  from  the  Secretary 
of  State,  with  accompanying  papers,  in  response  to 
a  resolution  of  the  Senate  requesting  him  to  furnish 
that  body,  if  not  incompatible  with  the  public  in¬ 
terest,  with  the  reports  made  by  the  mission  of  the 
United  States  to  Poland,  headed  by  the  honorable 
Llenry  Morgenthau. 

WOODROW  WILSON. 

The  White  House, 

January  15,  1920. 


The  PRESIDENT: 

The  undersigned,  the  Secretary  of  State,  in  re¬ 
sponse  to  a  resolution  passed  by  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States  on  October  22  (calendar  day,  October 
28),  1919,  reading  as  follows: 

Whereas  it  is  understood  that  the  mission  of  the  United 
States  Government  to  Poland,  headed  by  Hon.  Henry 
Morgenthau,  has  completed  its  work,  and  Mr.  Morgen¬ 
thau  has  made  a  report  to  the  Secretary  of  State:  There¬ 
fore  be  it 

Resolved,  That  the  Secretary  of  State  is  hereby  requested 
to  send  to  the  Senate,  if  it  is  not  incompatible  with  the 
public  interest,  a  copy  of  said  report, 

has  the  honor  to  submit  herewith  for  transmission 
to  the  Senate,  if  the  President  approve  thereof,  a 
copy  of  the  report  made  by  the  honorable  Henry 
Morgenthau,  head  of  the  mission,  and  a  copy  of  a 
report  made  by  the  other  members  of  the  mission, 
Gen.  Edgar  Jadwin,  United  States  Army,  and  Mr. 
Homer  H.  Johnson. 

Respectfully  submitted. 

ROBERT  LANSING. 

Department  of  State, 

Washington,  January  14,  1920. 


3 


I 

The  Morgen thau  Report 


American  Commission  to  Negotiate  Peace, 
Mission  to  Poland, 

Paris,  October  3,  1919. 

To  the  American  commission  to  negotiate  peace. 

Gentlemen:  1.  A  mission,  consisting  of  Mr.  Henry 
Morgenthau,  Brig.  Gen.  Edgar  Jadwin,  and  Mr. 
Homer  H.  Johnson,  was  appointed  by  the  American 
commission  to  negotiate  peace  to  investigate  Jewish 
matters  in  Poland.  The  appointment  of  such  a  mis¬ 
sion  had  previously  been  requested  by  Mr.  Pader¬ 
ewski,  president  of  the  council  of  ministers  of  the 
Republic  of  Poland.  On  June  30,  1919,  Secretary 
Lansing  wrote  to  this  mission : 

It  is  desired  that  the  mission  make  careful  inquiry  into 
all  matters  affecting  the  relations  between  the  Jewish  and 
non-Jewish  elements  in  Poland.  This  will,  of  course,  in¬ 
volve  the  investigation  of  the  various  massacres,  pogroms, 
and  other  excesses  alleged  to  have  taken  place,  the  eco¬ 
nomic  boycott,  and  other  methods  of  discrimination  against 
the  Jewish  race.  The  establishment  of  the  truth  in  regard 
to  these  matters  is  not,  however,  an  end  in  itself.  It  is 
merely  for  the  purpose  of  seeking  to  discover  the  reason 
lying  behind  such  excesses  and  discriminations  with  a  view 
to  finding  a  possible  remedy.  The  American  Government 
as  you  know,  is  inspired  by  a  friendly  desire  to  render 
service  to  all  elements  in  the  new  Poland — Christians  and 
Jews  alike.  I  am  convinced  that  any  measures  that  may 
be  taken  to  ameliorate  the  conditions  of  the  Jews  will  also 
benefit  the  rest  of  the  population  and  that,  conversely, 
anything  done  for  the  community  benefit  of  Poland  as  a 
whole  will  be  of  advantage  to  the  Jewish  race.  I  am 
sure  that  the  members  of  your  mission  are  approaching 
the  subject  in  the  right  spirit,  free  from  prejudice  one  way 
or  the  other,  and  filled  with  a  desire  to  discover  the  truth 
and  evolve  some  constructive  measures  to  improve  the 
situation  which  give  concern  to  all  the  friends  of  Poland. 

2.  The  mission  reached  Warsaw  on  July  13,  1919, 
and  remained  in  Poland  until  September  13,  1919. 
All  the  places  where  the  principal  excesses  had  oc¬ 
curred  were  visited.  In  addition  thereto  the  mission 
also  studied  the  economic  and  social  conditions  in 
such  places  as  Lodz,  Krakau,  Grodno,  Kalisch, 
Posen,  Cholm,  Lublin,  and  Stanislawow.  By  auto- 
mobiling  over  2,500  miles  through  Russian,  Aus¬ 
trian,  and  German  Poland,  the  mission  also  came 
into  immediate  contact  with  the  inhabitants  of  the 
small  towns  and  villages.  In  order  properly  to 
appreciate  the  present  cultural  and  social  conditions, 
the  mission  also  visited  educational  institutions,  li¬ 
braries,  hospitals,  museums,  art  galleries,  orphan 
asylums,  and  prisons. 

3.  Investigations  of  the  excesses  were  made  most¬ 
ly  in  the  presence  of  representatives  of  the  Polish 
Government  and  of  the  Jewish  communities.  There 
were  also  present  in  many  cases  military  and  civil 
officials  and,  wherever  possible,  officials  in  command 
at  the  time  the  excesses  occurred  were  conferred 


with  and  interrogated.  In  this  work  the  Polish 
authorities  and  the  American  minister  to  Poland, 
Mr.  Hugh  Gibson,  lent  the  mission  every  facility. 
Deputations  of  all  kinds  of  organizations  were  re¬ 
ceived  and  interviewed.  A  large  number  of  public 
meetings  and  gatherings  were  attended,  and  the 
mission  endeavored  to  obtain  a  correct  impression 
of  what  had  occurred,  of  the  present  mental  state 
of  the  public,  and  of  the  attitude  of  the  various  fac¬ 
tions  toward  one  another. 

4.  The  Jews  first  entered  Poland  in  large  numbers 
during  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries,  when 
they  migrated  from  Germany  and  other  countries  as 
the  result  of  severe  persecutions.  Their  language 
was  German,  which  subsequently  developed  into  a 
Hebrew-German  dialect,  or  Yiddish.  As  prior  to 
this  immigration  only  two  classes  or  estates  had 
existed  in  Poland  (the  owners  and  the  tillers  of  the 
soil),  the  Jewish  immigrant  became  the  pioneer  of 
trade  and  finance,  settling  in  the  towns  and  villages. 
As  time  went  on  it  became  generally  known 
throughout  Europe  that  Poland  was  a  place  of 
refuge  for  the  Jews,  and  their  numbers  were  aug¬ 
mented  as  a  result  of  persecutions  in  western 
Europe.  Still  more  recently,  as  a  result  of  the  ex¬ 
pulsion  of  the  Jews  from  Russia,  on  account  of  the 
enforcement  of  the  pale  of  settlement,  and  of  the 
May  laws  of  1882,  their  number  was  further  in¬ 
creased. 

5.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  Poland  has  been 
a  place  of  refuge  for  the  Jews,  there  have  been  anti- 
Jewish  movements  at  various  times.  The  present 
anti-Semitic  feeling  took  a  definite  political  form 
after  the  Russion  revolution  of  1905.  This  feeling 
reached  an  intense  stage  in  1912,  when  the  Polish 
National  Democratic  Party  nominated  an  anti-Se¬ 
mite  to  represent  Warsaw  in  the  Russian  Duma 
and  the  Jews  cast  their  vote  for  a  Polish  Socialist 
and  carried  the  election.  The  National  Democratic 
Party  then  commenced  a  vigorous  anti-Semitic  cam¬ 
paign.  During  the  German  occupation  this  cam¬ 
paign  was  temporarily  reduce.d.  At  the  end  of  the 
Great  War  the  chaotic  and  unnatural  state  of  affairs 
in  which  Poland  fouhd  itself  gave  good  ground  for 
a  condition  of  social  unrest,  which,  together  with  the 
world-stimulated  tendency  toward  national  self-de¬ 
termination,  accentuated  the  feeling  between  Jew¬ 
ish  and  non-Jewish  elements.  The  chauvinistic  re¬ 
action  created  by  the  sudden  acquisition  of  a  long- 
coveted  freedom  ripened  the  public  mind  for  anti- 
Semitic  or  anti-alien  sentiment,  which  was  strong¬ 
ly  agitated  by  the  press  and  by  politicians.  This 
finally  encouraged  physical  manifestations  of  violent 
outcroppings  of  an  unbalanced  social  condition. 


4 


6.  When,  in  November,  1918,  the  Austrian 
and  German  armies  of  occupation  left  Poland 
there  was  no  firm  government  until  the  ar¬ 
rival  of  Gen.  Pilsudski,  who  had  escaped  from 
a  German  prison,  and  it  was  duringthis  period, 
before  the  Polish  Republic  came  into  being, 
that  the  first  of  the  excesses  took  place.  (The 
mission  has  purposely  avoided  the  use  of  the 
word  “pogrom,”  as  the  word  is  applied  to 
everything  from  petty  outrages  to  premedi¬ 
tated  and  carefully  organized  massacres.  No 
fixed  definition  is  generally  understood.) 
There  were  eight  principal  excesses,  which 
are  here  described  in  chronological  order. 

(1)  Kielce,  November  11,  1918. 

Shortly  after  the  evacuation  of  the  Austrian 
troops  from  Kielce  the  Jews  of  this  city  secured 
permission  from  the  local  authorities  to  hold  a  meet¬ 
ing  in  the  Polski  Theater.  The  purpose  of  this 
meeting  was  to  discuss  Jewish  national  aspirations.1 
It  began  shortly  before  2  o’clock  and  filled  the  thea¬ 
ter  to  overflowing.  During  the  afternoon  a  small 
crowd  of  Polish  civilians,  largely  composed  of 
students,  gathered  outside  of  the  theater.  At  6.30 
p.  m.  the  meeting  began  to  break  up,  and  when  only 
about  300  people  remained  in  the  theater,  some  mili¬ 
tiamen  entered  and  began  to  search  for  arms.  A 
short  while  thereafter,  and  while  the  militiamen 
were  still  in  the  building,  a  crowd  of  civilians  and 
some  soldiers  came  into  the  auditorium  and  drove 
the  Jews  from  the  stairs.  On  the  stairs  there  was  a 
double  line  of  men  armed  with  clubs  and  bayonets, 
who  beat  the  Jews  as  they  left  the  building.  After 
the  Jews  reached  the  street  they  were  again  beaten 
by  a  mob  outside.  As  a  result  of  this  attack  four 
Jews  were  killed  and  a  large  number  wounded.  A 
number  of  civilians  have  been  indicted  for  participa¬ 
tion  in  this  excess,  but  have  not  as  yet  been  brought 
to  trial. 

(2)  Lemberg,  November  21-23,  1918. 

On  October  30,  1918,  when  the  Austrian  Empire 
collapsed,  the  Ukrainian  troops,  formerly  in  the 
Austrian  service,  assumed  control  of  the  town.  A 
few  hundred  Polish  boys,  combined  with  numerous 
volunteers  of  doubtful  character,  recaptured  about 
half  the  city  and  held  it  until  the  arrival  of  Polish 
reinforcements  on  November  21.  The  Jewish  pop¬ 
ulation  declared  themselves  neutral,  but  the  fact 
that  the  Jewish  quarter  lay  within  the  section  occu¬ 
pied  by  the  Ukrainians,  and  that  the  Jews  had  or¬ 
ganized  their  own  militia,  and  further,  the  rumor 
that  some  of  the  Jewish  population  had  fired  upon 
the  soldiery,  stimulated  amongst  the  Polish  volun¬ 
teers  an  anti-Semitic  bias  that  readily  communicated 
itself  to  the  relieving  troops.2  The  situation  was 
further  complicated  by  the  presence  of  some  15,000 
uniformed  deserters  and  numerous  criminals  re¬ 
leased  by  the  Ukrainians  from  local  jails,  who  were 
ready  to  join  in  any  disorder,  particularly  if,  as  in 
the  case  of  wholesale  pillage,  they  might  profit 
thereby. 

Upon  the  final  departure  of  the  Ukrainians,  these 


disreputable  elements  plundered  to  the  extent  of 
many  millions  of  crowns  the  dwellings  and  stores 
in  the  Jewish  quarter,  and  did  not  hesitate  at  mur¬ 
der  when  the£  met  with  resistance.  During  the 
ensuing  disorders,  which  prevailed  on  November  21, 
22,  and  23,  64  Jews  were  killed  and  a  large  amount 
of  property  destroyed.  Thirty-eight  houses  were 
set  on  fire,  and  owing  to  the  paralysis  of  the  fire 
department,  were  completely  gutted.  The  Syna¬ 
gogue  was  also  burned,  and  large  numbers  of  the 
sacred  scrolls  of  the  law  were  destroyed.  The 
repression  of  the  disorders  was  rendered  more  diffi¬ 
cult  by  the  prevailing  lack  of  discipline  among  the 
newly  organized  Polish  troops,  and  by  a  certain 
hesitation  among  the  junior  officers  to  apply  stern 
punitive  measures.  When  officers’  patrols  under 
experienced  leaders  were  finally  organized  on  No¬ 
vember  23,  robbery  and  violence  ceased. 

As  early  as  December  24,  1918,  the  Polish  Gov¬ 
ernment,  through  the  ministry  of  justice,  began  a 
strict  investigation  of  the  events  of  November  21 
and  23.  A  special  commission,  headed  by  a  justice 
of  the  supreme  court,  sat  in  Lemberg  for  about  two 
months,  and  rendered  an  extensive  formal  report 
which  has  been  furnished  this  mission.  In  spite  of 
the  crowded  dockets  of  the  local  courts,  where  over 
7,000  cases  are  now  pending,  164  persons,  ten  of 
them  Jews,  have  been  tried  for  complicity  in  the 
November  disorders,  and  numerous  similar  cases 
await  disposal.  Forty-four  persons  are  under  sen¬ 
tences  ranging  from  10  days  to  18  months.  Aside 
from  the  civil  courts,  the  local  court-martial  has 
sentenced  military  persons  to  confinement  for  as 
long  as  three  years  for  lawlessness  during  the  period 
in  question.  This  mission  is  advised  that  on  the 
basis  of  official  investigations  the  Government  has 
begun  the  payment  of  claims  for  damages  resulting 
from  these  events. 

(3)  Pinsk,  April  5,  1919. 

Late  in  the  afternoon  of  April  5,  1919,  a  month 
or  more  after  the  Polish  occupation  of  Pinsk,  some 
75  Jews  of  both  sexes,  with  the  official  permission 
of  the  town  commander,  gathered  in  the  assembly 
hall  at  the  People’s  House,  in  the  Kupiecka  Street, 
to  discuss  the  distribution  of  relief  sent  by  the  Amer¬ 
ican  joint  distribution  committee.  As  the  meeting 
was  about  to  adjourn,  it  was  interrupted  by  a  band 
of  soldiers,  who  arrested  and  searched  the  whole 
assembly,  and,  after  robbing  the  prisoners,  marched 
them  at  a  rapid  pace  to  gendarmerie  headquarters. 
Thence  the  prisoners  were  conducted  to  the  market 
place  and  lined  up  against  the  wall  of  the  cathedral. 
With  no  light  except  the  lamps  of  a  military  auto¬ 
mobile  the  six  women  in  the  crowd,  and  about  25 
men,  were  separated  from  the  mass,  and  the  re¬ 
mainder,  35  in  number,  were  shot  with  scant  delib¬ 
eration  and  no  trial  whatever.  Early  the  next  morn¬ 
ing  three  wounded  victims  were  shot  in  cold  blood 
when  it  was  found  that  they  were  still  alive. 

The  women  and  other  reprieved  prisoners  were 
confined  in  the  city  jail  until  the  following  Thurs¬ 
day.  The  women  were  stripped  and  beaten  by  the 


5 


prison  guards  so  severely  that  several  of  them  were 
bed-ridden  for  weeks  thereafter,  and  the  men  were 
subjected  to  similar  maltreatment. 

It  has  been  asserted  officially  by  the  Polish  au¬ 
thorities  that  there  was  reason  to  suspect  this 
assemblage  of  bolshevist  allegiance.  This  mission 
is  convinced  that  no  arguments  of  bolshevist  nature 
were  mentioned  in  the  meeting  in  question.  While 
it  is  recognized  that  certain  information  of  bolshe¬ 
vist  activities  in  Pinsk  had  been  received  by  two 
Jewish  soldiers,  the  undersigned  is  convinced  that 
Maj.  Luczynski,  the  town  commander,  showed  rep¬ 
rehensible  and  frivolous  readiness  to  place  credence 
upon  such  untested  assertions,  and  on  this  insuffi¬ 
cient  basis  took  inexcusably  drastic  action  ag'ainst 
reputable  citizens  whose  loyal  character  could  have 
been  immediately  established  by  a  consultation  with 
any  well-known  non-Jewish  inhabitant. 

The  statements  made  officially  by  Gen.  Listowski, 
the  Polish  group  commander,  that  the  Jewish  pop¬ 
ulation  on  April  5  attacked  the  Polish  troops,  are 
regarded  by  this  mission  as  devoid  of  foundation. 
The  undersigned  is  further  of  the  opinion  that  the 
consultation  prior  to  executing  the  35  Jews,  alleged 
by  Maj.  Luczynski  to  have  had  the  character  of  a 
court-martial,  was  by  the  very  nature  of  the  case 
a  most  casual  affair  with  no  judicial  nature  what¬ 
ever,  since  less  than  an  hour  elapsed  between  the 
arrest  and  the  execution.  It  is  further  found  that 
no  conscientious  effort  was  made  at  the  time  either 
to  investigate  the  charges  against  the  prisoners  or 
even  sufficiently  to  identify  them.  Though  there 
have  been  official  investigations  of  this  case  none 
of  the  offenders  answerable  for  this  summary  exe¬ 
cution  have  been  punished  or  even  tried,  nor  has  the 
Diet  commission  published  its  findings. 

(4)  Lida,  April  17,  1919. 

On  April  17,  1919,  the  Polish  military  forces  cap¬ 
tured  Lida  from  the  Russian  Bolsheviks.  After  the 
city  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Poles  the  soldiers 
proceeded  to  enter  and  rob  the  houses  of  the  Jews. 
During  this  period  of  pillage  39  Jews  were  killed 
A  large  number  of  Jews,  including  the  local  rabbi, 
were  arbitrarily  arrested  on  the  same  day  by  the 
Polish  authorities  and  kept  for  24  hours  without  food 
amid  revolting  conditions  of  filth  at  No.  60  Kamien- 
ska  Street.  Jews  were  also  impressed  for  forced 
labor  without  respect  for  age  or  infirmity.  It  does 
not  appear  that  anyone  has  been  punished  for  these 
excesses,  or  that  any  steps  have  been  taken  to  re¬ 
imburse  the  victims  of  the  robberies. 

(5)  Wilna,  April  19-21,  1919. 

On  April  19  Polish  detachments  entered  the  city 
of  Wilna.  The  city  was  definitely  taken  by  the 
Poles  after  three  days  of  street  fighting,  during 
which  time  they  lost  33  men  killed.  During  this 
same  period  some  65  Jews  lost  their  lives.  From 
the  evidence  submitted  it  appears  that  none  of  these 
people,  among  whom  were  four  women  and  eight 
men  over  50  years  of  age,  had  served  with  the  Bol¬ 
sheviks.  Eight  Jews  were  marched  3  kilometers 


to  the  outskirts  of  Wilna  and  deliberately  shot  with¬ 
out  a  semblance  of  a  trial  or  investigation.  Others 
were  shot  by  soldiers  who  were  robbing  Jewish 
houses.  No  list  has  been  furnished  the  mission  of 
any  Polish  civilians  killed  during  the  occupation. 
It  is,  however,  stated  on  behalf  of  the  Government 
that  the  civilian  inhabitants  of  Wilna  took  part  on 
both  sides  in  this  fighting,  and  that  some  civilians 
fired  upon  the  soldiers.  Over  2,000  Jewish  houses 
and  stores  in  the  city  were  entered  by  Polish  sol¬ 
diers  and  civilians  during  these  three  days,  and  the 
inhabitants  robbed  and  beaten.  It  is  claimed  by  the 
Jewish  community  that  the  consequent  losses 
amounted  to  over  10,000,000  rubles.  Many  of  the 
poorest  families  were  robbed  of  their  shoes  and 
blankets.  Hundreds  of  Jews  were  arrested  and  de¬ 
ported  from  the  city.  Some  of  them  were  herded 
into  box  cars  and  kept  without  food  or  water  for 
four  days.  Old  men  and  children  were  carried  away 
without  trial  or  investigation.  Two  of  these  pris¬ 
oners  have  since  died  from  the  treatment  they  re¬ 
ceived.  Included  in  this  list  were  some  of  the  most 
prominent  Jews  of  Wilna,  such  as  the  eminent 
Jewish  writers,  Jaffe  and  Niger.  For  days  the  fami¬ 
lies  of  these  prisoners  were  without  news  from  them 
and  feared  that  they  had  been  killed.  The  soldiers 
also  broke  into  the  synagogue  and  mutilated  the 
sacred  scrolls  of  the  law.  Up  to  August  3,  1919, 
when  the  mission  was  in  Wilna,  none  of  the  soldiers 
or  civilians  responsible  for  these  excesses  had  been 
punished. 

(6)  Kolbuszowa,  May  7,  1919. 

For  a  few  days  before  May  7,  1919,  the 
Jews  of  Kolbuszowa  feared  that  excesses 
might  take  place,  as  there  had  been  riots  in 
the  neighboring  towns  of  Rzeszow  and  Glo- 
gow.  These  riots  had  been  the  result  of  po¬ 
litical  agitation  in  this  district  and  of  excite¬ 
ment  caused  by  a  case  of  alleged  ritual  mur¬ 
der,  in  which  the  Jewish  defendant  had  been 
acquitted.  On  May  6  a  company  of  soldiers 
was  ordered  to  Kolbuszowa  to  prevent  the 
threatened  trouble.  Early  in  the  morning  of 
May  7  a  great  number  of  peasants,  among 
whom  were  many  former  soldiers  of  the  Aus¬ 
trian  Army,  entered  the  town.  The  rioters 
disarmed  the  soldiers  after  two  soldiers  and 
three  peasants  had  been  killed.  They  then 
proceeded  to  rob  the  Jewish  stores  and  to 
beat  any  Jews  who  fell  into  their  hands 
Eight  Jews  were  killed  during  this  excess. 
Order  was  restored  when  a  new  detachment 
of  soldiers  arrived  late  in  the  afternoon.  One 
of  the  rioters  has  since  been  tried  and  exe¬ 
cuted  by  the  Polish  Government. 

(7)  Czestochowa,  May  27,  1919. 

On  May  27,  1919,  at  Czestochowa,  a  shot  fired  by 
an  unknown  person  slightly  wounded  a  Polish  sol¬ 
dier.  A  rumor  spread  that  the  shot  had  been  fired 
by  the  Jews,  and  riots  broke  out  in  the  city  in  which 
Polish  soldiers  and  civilians  took  part.  During 
these  riots  five  Jews,  including  a  doctor  who  was 
hurrying  to  aid  one  of  the  injured,  were  beaten  to 


6 


death  and  a  large  number  were  wounded.  French 
officers,  who  were  stationed  at  Czestochowa,  took 
an  active  part  in  preventing  further  murders. 

(8)  Minsk,  August  8,  1919. 

On  August  8,  1919,  the  Polish  troops  took  the  city 
of  Minsk  from  the  Russian  Bolsheviks.  The  Polish 
troops  entered  the  city  at  about  10  o’clock  in  the 
morning,  and  by  12  o’clock  they  had  absolute  con¬ 
trol.  Notwithstanding  the  presence  in  Minsk  of 
Gen.  Jadwin  and  other  members  of  this  mission, 
and  the  orders  of  the  Polish  commanding  general 
forbidding  violence  against  civilians,  31  Jews  were 
killed  by  the  soldiers.  Ofily  one  of  this  number  can 
in  any  way  be  connected  with  the  bolshevist  move¬ 
ment.  Eighteen  of  the  deaths  appear  to  have  been 
deliberate  murder.  Two  of  these  murders  were  in¬ 
cident  to  robberies,  but  the  rest  were  committed,  to 
all  appearances,  solely  on  the  ground  that  the  vic¬ 
tims  were  Jews.  During  the  afternoon  and  in  the 
evening  of  August  8  the  Polish  soldiers,  aided  by 
civilians,  plundered  377  shops,  all  of  which  belonged 
to  Jews.  It  must  be  noted,  however,  that  about  90 
per  cent  of  the  stores  in  Minsk  are  owned  by  Jews. 
No  effective  attempt  was  made  to  prevent  these  rob¬ 
beries  until  the  next  morning,  when  adequate  offi¬ 
cers’  patrols  were  sent  out  through  the  streets  and 
order  was  established.  The  private  houses  of  many 
of  the  Jews  were  also  broken  into  by  soldiers  and 
the  inhabitants  were  beaten  and  robbed.  The  Po¬ 
lish  Government  has  stated  that  four  Polish  sol¬ 
diers  were  killed  while  attempting  to  prevent  rob¬ 
beries.  It  has  also  been  stated  to  the  mission  that 
some  of  the  rioters  have  been  executed. 

7.  There  have  also  been  here  and  there  individual 
cases  of  murder  not  enumerated  in  the  preceding 
paragraphs,  but  their  detailed  description  has  not 
been  considered  necessary  inasmuch  as  they  present 
no  characteristics  not  already  observed  in  the  prin¬ 
cipal  excesses.  In  considering  these  excesses  as  a 
whole,  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  of  the  eight 
cities  and  towns  at  which  striking  disorders  have 
occurred,  only  Kielce  and  Czestochowa  are  within 
the  boundaries  of  Congress  Poland.3  In  Kielce  and 
Kolbuszowa  the  excesses  were  committed  by  city 
civilians  and  by  peasants,  respectively.  At  Czes¬ 
tochowa  both  civilians  and  soldiers  took  part  in  the 
disorders.  At  Pinsk  the  excess  was  essentially  the 
fault  of  one  officer.  In  Lemberg,  Lida,  Wilna,  and 
Minsk  the  excesses  were  committed  by  the  soldiers 
who  were  capturing  the  cities  and  not  by  the  civilian 
population.  In  the  three  last-named  cities  the  anti- 
Semitic  prejudice  of  the  soldiers  had  been  inflamed 
by  the  charge  that  the  Jews  were  Bolsheviks,  while 
at  Lemberg  it  was  associated  with  the  idea  that  the 
Jews  were  making  common  cause  with  the  Ukrain¬ 
ians.  'These  excesses  were,  therefore,  political  as 
well  as  anti-Semitic  in  character.  The  responsibility 
for  these  excesses  is  borne  for  the  most  part  by  the 
undisciplined  and  ill-equipped  Polish  recruits,  who, 
uncontrolled  by  their  inexperienced  and  ofttimes 
timid  officers,  sought  to  profit  at  the  expense  of 
that  portion  of  the  population  which  they  regarded 


as  alien  and  hostile  to  Polish  nationality  and  aspira¬ 
tions.  It  is  recognized  that  the  enforcement  of  dis¬ 
cipline  in  a  new  and  untrained  army  is  a  matter  of 
extreme  difficulty.  On  the  other  hand,  the  prompt 
cessation  of  disorder  in  Lemberg  after  the  adoption 
of  appropriate  measures  of  control  shows  that  an 
unflinching  determination  to  restore  order  and  a 
firm  application  of  repressive  measures  can  prevent, 
or  at  least  limit,  such  excesses.  It  is,  therefore,  be¬ 
lieved  that  a  more  aggressive  punitive  policy,  and 
a  more  general  publicity  for  reports  of  judicial  and 
military  prosecutions,  would  have  minimized  sub¬ 
sequent  excesses  by  discouraging  the  belief  among 
the  soldiery  that  robbery  and  violence  could  be  com¬ 
mitted  with  impunity. 

8.  Just  as  the  Jews  would  resent  being  con¬ 
demned  as  a  race  for  the  action  of  a  few  of 
their  undesirable  coreligionists,  so  it  would  be 
correspondingly  unfair  to  condemn  the  Polish 
nation  as  a  whole  for  the  violence  committed 
by  uncontrolled  troops  or  local  mobs.  These 
excesses  were  apparently  not  premeditated, 
for  if  they  had  been  part  of  a  preconceived 
plan,  the  number  of  victims  would  have  run 
into  the  thousands  instead  of  amounting  to 
about  280.  It  is  believed  that  these  excesses 
were  the  result  of  a  widespread  anti-Semitic 
prejudice  aggravated  by  the  belief  that  the 
Jewish  inhabitants  were  politically  hostile  to 
the  Polish  State.  When  the  boundaries  of 
Poland  are  once  fixed,  and  the  internal  or¬ 
ganization  of  the  country  is  perfected,  the  Po¬ 
lish  Government  will  be  increasingly  able  to 
protect  all  classes  of  Polish  citizenry.  Since 
the  Polish  Republic  has  subscribed  to  the 
treaty  which  provides  for  the  protection  of 
racial,  religious  and  linguistic  minorities,  it  is 
confidently  anticipated  that  the  Government 
will  whole-heartedly  accept  the  responsibil¬ 
ity,  not  only  of  guarding  certain  classes  of  its 
citizens  from  aggression,  but  also  of  educat¬ 
ing  the  masses  beyond  the  state  of  mind  that 
makes  such  aggression  possible. 

9.  Besides  these  excesses  there  have  been  reported 
to  the  mission  numerous  cases  of  other  forms  of  per¬ 
secutions.  Thus,  in  almost  every  one  of  the"  cities 
and  towns  of  Poland,  Jews  have  been  stopped  by 
the  soldiers  and  had  their  beards  either  torn  out  or 
cut  off.  As  the  orthodox  Jews  feel  that  the  shaving 
of  their  beards  is  contrary  to  their  religious  belief, 
this  form  of  persecution  has  a  particular  significance 
to  them.  Jews  also  have  been  beaten  and  forced 
from  trains  and  railroad  stations.  As  a  result  many 
of  them  are  afraid  to  travel.  The  result  of  all  these 
minor  persecutions  is  to  keep  the  Jewish  population 
in  a  state  of  ferment,  and  to  subject  them  to  the 
fear  that  graver  excesses  may  again  occur. 

10.  Whereas  it  has  been  easy  to  determine  the 
excesses  which  took  place  and  to  fix  the  approxi¬ 
mate  number  of  deaths,  it  was  more  difficult  to 
establish  the  extent  of  anti-Jewish  discrimination. 
This  discrimination  finds  its  most  conspicuous  man¬ 
ifestation  in  the  form  of  an  economic  boycott.  The 


7 


national  Democratic  Party  has  continuously  agi¬ 
tated  the  economic  strangling  of  the  Jews.  Through 
the  press  and  political  announcements,  as  well  as 
by  public  speeches,  the  non-Jewish  element  of  the 
Polish  people  is  urged  to  abstain  from  dealing  with 
the  Jews.  Landowners  are  warned  not  to  sell  their 
property  to  Jews,  and  in  some  cases  where  such 
sales  have  been  made,  the  names  of  the  offenders 
have  been  posted  within  black-bordered  notices, 
stating  that  such  vendors  were  “dead  to  Poland.’' 
Even  at  the  present  time,  this  campaign  is  being 
waged  by  most  of  the  non-Jewish  press,  which  con¬ 
stantly  advocates  that  the  economic  boycott  be  used 
as  a  means  of  ridding  Poland  of  its  Jewish  element. 
This  agitation  had  created  in  the  minds  of  some  of 
the  Jews  the  feeling  that  there  is  an  invisible  rope 
around  their  necks,  and  they  claim  that  this  is  the 
worst  persecution  that  they  can  be  forced  to  endure. 
Non-Jewish  laborers  have  in  many  cases  refused  to 
work  side  by  side  with  Jews.  The  percentage  of 
Jews  in  public  office,  especially  those  holding  minor 
positions,  such  as  railway  employees,  firemen,  po¬ 
licemen,  and  the  like,  has  been  materially  reduced 
since  the  present  Government  has  taken  control 
Documents  have  been  furnished  the  mission  show¬ 
ing  that  Government-owned  railways  have  dis¬ 
charged  Jewish  employes  and  given  them  certifi¬ 
cates  that  they  have  beefi  released  for  no  other  rea¬ 
son  than  that  they  belong  to  the  Jewish  race. 

11.  Further,  the  establishment  of  co-opera¬ 
tive  stores  is  claimed  by  many  Jewish  traders 
to  be  a  form  of  discrimination.  It  would  seem, 
however,  that  this  movement  is  a  legitimate 
effort  to  restrict  the  activities  and  therefore 
the  profits  of  the  middleman.  Unfortunately, 
when  these  stores  were  introduced  into  Po¬ 
land,  they  were  advertised  as  a  means  of  elim¬ 
inating  the  Jewish  trader.  The  Jews  have, 
therefore,  been  caused  to  feel  that  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  co-operatives  is  an  attack  upon 
themselves.  While  the  establishment  and 
the  maintenance  of  co-operatives  may  have 
been  influenced  by  anti-Semitic  sentiment, 
this  is  a  form  of  economic  activity  which  any 
community  is  perfectly  entitled  to  pursue. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Jews  complain  that 
even  the  Jewish  co-operatives  and  individual 
Jews  are  discriminated  against  by  the  Gov¬ 
ern  in  the  distribution  of  Government-con- 
trolled  supplies. 

12.  The  Government  has  denied  that  dis¬ 
crimination  against  Jews  has  been  practiced 
as  a  Government  policy,  though  it  has  not 
denied  that  there  may  be  individual  cases 
where  anti-Semitism  has  played  a  part.  As¬ 
surances  have  been  made  to  the  mission  by 
official  authorities  that  in  so  far  as  it  lies 
within  the  power  of  the  Government  this  dis¬ 
crimination  will  be  corrected. 

13.  In  considering  the  causes  for  the  anti- 
Semitic  feeling  which  has'  brought  about  the 
manifestations  described  above,  it  must  be  re¬ 


membered  that  ever  since  the  partition  of 
1795  the  Poles  have  striven  to  be  reunited  as 
a  nation  and  to  regain  their  freedom.  This 
continual  effort  to  keep  alive  their  national 
aspirations  has  caused  them  to  look  with 
hatred  upon  anything  which  might  interfere 
with  their  aims.  This  has  led  to  a  conflict 
with  the  nationalist  declarations  of  some  of 
the  Jewish  organizations  which  desire  to  es¬ 
tablish  cultural  autonomy  financially  sup¬ 
ported  by  the  state.4  In  addition,  the  posi¬ 
tion  taken  by  the  Jews  in  favor  of  article  93 
of  the  treaty  of  Versailles,  guaranteeing  pro¬ 
tection  to  racial,  linguistic  and  religious 
minorities  in  Poland  has  created  a  further 
resentment  against  them.5  Moreover,  Po¬ 
lish  national  feeling  is  irritated  by  what  is 
regarded  as  the  “alien”  character  of  the  great 
mass  of  the  Jewish  population.  This  is  con¬ 
stantly  brought  home  to  the  Poles  by  the  fact 
that  the  majority  of  the  Jews  affect  a  distinc¬ 
tive  dress,  observe  the  Sabbath  on  Saturday, 
conduct  business  on  Sunday,  have  separate 
dietary  laws,  wear  long  beards,  and  speak  a 
language  of  their  own.  The  basis  of  this  lan¬ 
guage  is  a  German  dialect,  and  the  fact  that 
Germany  was,  and  still  is,  looked  upon  by  the 
Poles  as  an  enemy  country  renders  this  ver¬ 
nacular  especially  unpopular.  The  concen¬ 
tration  of  the  Jews  in  separate  districts  or 
quarters  in  Polish  cities  also  emphasizes  the 
line  of  demarcation  separating  them  from 
other  citizens. 

14.  The  strained  relations  between  the  Jews  and 
non-Jews  have  been  further  increased  not  only  by 
the  Great  War,  during  which  Poland  was  the  bat¬ 
tleground  for  the  Russian,  German,  and  Austrian 
Armies  but  also  by  the  present  conflicts  with  the 
Bolsheviks  and  the  Ukrainians.  The  economic  con¬ 
dition  of  Poland  is  at  its  lowest  ebb.  Manufactur¬ 
ing  and  commerce  have  virtually  ceased.  The 
shortage,  the  high  price,  and  the  imperfect  distribu¬ 
tion  of  food,  are  a  dangerous  menace  to  the  health 
and  welfare  of  the  urban  population.  As  a  result, 
hundreds  of  thousands  are  suffering  from  hunger 
and  are  but  half  clad,  while  thousands  are  dying 
of  disease  and  starvation.  The  cessation  of  com¬ 
merce  is  particularly  felt  by  the  Jewish  population, 
who  are  almost  entirely  dependent  upon  it.  Owing 
to  the  conditions  described,  prices  have  doubled  and 
tripled,  and  the  population  has  become  irritated 
against  the  Jewish  traders,  whom  it  blames  for  the 
abnormal  increase  thus  occasioned. 

15.  The  great  majority  of  Jews  in  Poland  belong 
to  separate  Jewish  political  parties.  The  largest 
of  these  are  the  Orthodox,  the  Zionist,  and  the  Na¬ 
tional.  Since  the  Jews  form  separate  political 
groups  it  is  probable  that  some  of  the  Polish  dis¬ 
crimination  against  them  is  political  rather  than 
anti-Semitic  in  character.  The  dominant  Pojish 
parties  give  to  their  supporters  Government  posi¬ 
tions  and  Government  patronage.  It  is  to  be  hoped, 
however,  that  the  Polish  majority  will  not  follow 


8 


this  system  in  the  case  of  positions  which  are  not 
essentially  political.  There  should  be  no  discrimi¬ 
nation  in  the  choice  of  professors  and  teachers,  nor 
in  the  selection  of  railroad  employees,  policemen, 
and  firemen,  or  the  incumbents  of  any  other  posi¬ 
tions  which  are  placed  under  the  civil  service  in 
England  and  the  United  States.  Like  other  de¬ 
mocracies,  Poland  must  realize  that  these  positions 
must  not  be  drawn  into  politics.  Efficiency  can  only 
be  attained  if  the  best  men  are  employed,  irrespec¬ 
tive  of  party  or  religion. 

• 

16.  The  relations  between  the  Jews  and 
non-Jews  will  undoubtedly  improve  in  a 
strong  democratic  Poland.  To  hasten  this 
there  should  be  reconciliation  and  co-opera¬ 
tion  between  the  86  per  cent  Christians  and 
the  14  per  cent  Jews.  The  86  per  cent  must 
realize  that  they  can  not  present  a  solid  front 
against  their  neighbors  if  one-seventh  of  the 
population  is  discontented,  fear-stricken,  and 
inactive.  The  minority  must  be  encouraged 
to  participate  with  their  whole  strength  and 
influence  in  making  Poland  the  great  unified 
country  that  is  required  in  central  Europe  to 
combat  the  tremendous  dangers  that  con¬ 
front  it.  Poland  must  promptly  develop  its 
full  strength,  and  by  its  conduct  first  merit 
and  then  receive  the  unstinted  moral,  finan¬ 
cial,  and  economic  support  of  all  the  world, 
which  will  insure  the  future  success  of  the 
Republic. 

17.  It  was  impossible  for  the  mission,  during  the 
two  months  it  was  in  Poland,  to  do  more  than  ac¬ 
quaint  itself  with  the  general  condition  of  the  peo¬ 
ple.  To  formulate  a  solution  of  the  Jewish  problem 
will  necessitate  a  careful  and  broad  study,  not  only 
of  the  economic  condition  of  the  Jews,  but  also  of 
the  exact  requirements  of  Poland.  These  require¬ 
ments  will  not  be  definitely  known  prior  to  the  fixa¬ 
tion  of  Polish  boundaries,  and  the  final  regulation 
of  Polish  relations  with  Russia,  with  which  the 
largest  share  of  trade  was  previously  conducted. 
It  is  recommended  that  the  league  of  nations,  or  the 
larger  nations  interested  in  this  problem,  send  to 
Poland  a  commission  consisting  of  recognized  in¬ 


dustrial,  educational,  agricultural,  economic,  and 
vocational  experts,  which  should  remain  there  as 
long  as  necessary  to  examine  the  problem  at  its 
source. 

18.  This  commission  should  devise  a  plan  by 
which  the  Jews  in  Poland  can  secure  the  same  eco¬ 
nomic  and  social  opportunities  as  are  enjoyed  by 
their  coreligionists  in  other  free  countries.  A  new 
Polish  constitution  is  now  in  the  making.  The  gen¬ 
erous  scope  of  this  national  instrument  has  already 
been  indicated  by  the  special  treaty  with  the  allied 
and  associated  powers,  in  which  Poland  has  affirmed 
its  fidelity  to  the  principles  of  liberty  and  justice 
and  the  rights  of  minorities,  and  we  may  be  certain 
that  Poland  will  be  faithful  to  its  pledge,  which  is 
so  conspicuously  in  harmony  with  the  nation’s  best 
traditions.  A  new  life  will  thus  be  opened  to  the 
Jews  and  it  will  be  the  task  of  the  proposed  commis¬ 
sion  to  fit  them  to  profit  thereby  and  to  win  the 
same  appreciation  gained  by  their  coreligionists 
elsewhere  as  a  valued  asset  to  the  commonwealths 
in  which  they  reside.  The  friends  of  the  Jews  in 
America,  England,  and  elsewhere  who  have  al¬ 
ready  evinced  such  great  interest  in  their  welfare, 
will  enthusiastically  grasp  the  opportunity  to  co¬ 
operate  in  working  out  any  good  solution  that  such 
a  commission  may  propound.  The  fact  that  it  may 
take  one  or  two  generations  to  reach  the  goal  must 
not  be  discouraging. 

19.  All  citizens  of  Poland  should  realize 
that  they  must  live  together.  They  can  not 
be  divorced  from  each  other  by  force  or  by 
any  court  of  law.  When  this  idea  is  once 
thoroughly  comprehended,  every  effort  will 
necessarily  be  directed  toward  a  better  un¬ 
derstanding  and  the  amelioration  of  existing 
conditions,  rather  than  toward  augmenting 
antipathy  and  discontent.  The  Polish  nation 
must  see  that  its  worst  enemies  are  those 
who  encourage  this  internal  strife.  A  house 
divided  against  itself  can  not  stand.  There 
must  be  but  one  class  of  citizens  in  Poland, 
all  members  of  which  enjoy  equal  rights  and 
render  equal  duties. 

Respectfully  submitted. 

HENRY  MORGENTHAU. 


9 


Footnotes 


1  See  footnote  No.  4. 

2  When  the  Austrians  surrendered  Lemberg  to  the  Ukrain¬ 
ians,  the  liberation  of  the  city  became  a  Polish  national  pos¬ 
tulate  to  such  a  degree  that  women  and  children  took  part 
in  the  fighting  in  the  streets.  The  Jews  of  Lemberg  pro¬ 
claimed  themselves  neutral  and  organized  their  own  security — 
guards  armed  with  carabines.  The  conviction  that  the  Jews 
were  fighting  on  the  side  of  the  Ukrainians  was  based  on  a 
series  of  incidents  and  misunderstandings.  The  Ukrainians 
wore  blue  and  yellow  badges  'on  their  sleeves,  which  were 
often  mistaken  for  the  blue  and  white  badges  of  the  Jews; 
the  “Ukrainskie  Slowo”  published  that  “the  Jews  are  with 
us”;  the  Ukrainian  communique  of  the  18th  November,  1918, 
reported  that  the  Polish  attack  “met  with  the  fierce  opposi¬ 
tion  of  the  Jewish  militia.”  The  falsity  of  these  reports  be¬ 
came  known  too  late.  About  2,000  criminals  let  out  of  prison 
by  the  Austrians  and  the  Ukrainians  tried  to  get  arms  and 
uniforms  in  order  to  plunder.  There  were,  therefore,  rob¬ 
bers  in  Austrian,  Ukrainian  and  Polish  uniforms.  In  street 
skirmishes  it  was  not  always  easy  to  discern  which  were  sol¬ 
diers  and  which  were  bandits,  and  when  the  Jewish  guards 
shot  at  bandits  clothed  in  Polish  uniforms,  the  opinion  was 
confirmed  that  the  Jews  shot  at  Poles. 

3  General  Jadwin  reports:  “Five  deaths  are  the  only  fatal¬ 
ities  from  mob  violence  in  Congress  Poland  discovered  or 
reported  to  us  since  the  establishment  of  a  stable  government 
in  the  Republic.”  Sir  Rumbold  says :  “The  excesses  against 
the  Jews  can  be  divided  from  a  geographical  point  of  view 
into  two  categories :  those  which  were  perpetrated  in  Poland 
proper,  in  the  course  of  which  eighteen  Jews  lost  their  lives, 
and  those  which  took  place  in  the  war  zones  which,  in  Novem¬ 
ber,  1918,  included  Lemberg,  and.  where  the  majority  of  the 
murders  occurred.  Sir  Stuart  Samuel  estimates  the  total 
number  of  lives  lost  at  not  less  than  348  so  that  330  Jews 
were  killed  in  the  war  zone.”  Congress  Poland  that  part  of 
the  partitioned  country  that  was  under  Russian  domination, 
has  a  population  of  approximately  12,000,000.  (Congress 
Poland  was  created  by  the  Congress  of  Vienna  in  1815,  and 
under  the  title  of  the  Kingdom  of  Poland  was  to  have  a 
separate  parliament  in  Warsaw  and  only  connected  with 
Russia  through  having  the  same  king.  Subsequently  the 
whole  of  Congress  Poland  was  incorporated  within  Russia 
and  called  the  Province  of  the  Vistula  in  order  that  the 
name  of  Poland  should  disappear  from  the  map  of  Europe). 

4  Immediately  after  the  proclamation  of  Poland’s  inde¬ 
pendence  the  Jews  came  forward  with  national  demands 
which  they  had  never  made  while  Poland  was  a  part  of  the 
annexing  states:  Russia,  Germany  and  Austria.  They  ad¬ 
dressed  themselves  to  the  Paris  Conference  with  these  de¬ 
mands,  which  were  partially  taken  into  account  in  the  treaty 
on  the  national  minorities.  The  Jews  demanded  their  own 
national  State  in  Palestine,  and  in  Poland  complete  equality 


with  other  citizens  of  the  State  and,  in  addition,  national 
autonomy  with  their  own  Jewish  National  Assembly  for  the 
direction  of  Jewish  affairs  in  Poland,  presenting  candidates 
for  a  Minister  of  Jewish  affairs,  and  administrating  inde¬ 
pendently  Jewish  schools  and  institutions.  These  demands 
found  an  echo  in  the  speeches  of  Jewish  deputies  in  the  Polish 
Parliament  on  the  24th,  27th  and  28th  February  in  the  decla¬ 
rations  of  the  deputies  Perlmutter,  Prylucki  and  Grunbaum. 
The  Poles  agreed  without  reserve  to  the  demand  for  equal 
rights  as  in  harmony  with  Poland’s  traditions,  but  rejected 
the  demand  for  national  autonomy  regarding  it  as  the  desire 
to  create  a  State  within  a  State,  and  a  demand  in  opposition 
to  equal  rights,  as  the  Jews  would  then  possess  more  rights 
than  the  rest  of  the  citizens. 

5  Poland  has  always  shown  complete  religious  tolerance, 
and  equal  rights  for  all  citizens  has  always  been  the  perma¬ 
nent  postulate  of  all  parties.  Under  Russian  rule  in  Poland 
the  Jews  obtained  equal  rights,  thanks  to  the  Poles.  Alexan¬ 
der  Wielopolski,  when  he  obtained  in  1862  from  Alexander  II. 
full  administrative  authority  for  Poland,  profited  by  it  to 
proclaim  and  establish  the  equal  rights  of  Jews.  The  Polish 
provincial  Diet  in  Poznania  asked  for  equal  rights  for  Jews 
in  1847,  and  the  Polish  Diet  in  Lemberg  voted  it  in  1868,  im¬ 
mediately  after  obtaining  the  autonomy  of  Galicia.  The  Poles 
were  therefore  painfully  impressed  that  the  the  moment  of 
Poland’s  uprising  the  Jews,  ignoring  Polish  factors,  ad¬ 
dressed  themselves  to  Paris  for  guarantees  of  their  rights  in 
reborn  Poland.  In  “A  Brief  Outline  of  Polish  History,” 
issued  in  1919  by  the  Polish  Encyclopeadic  Publications  Com¬ 
mittee,  this  explanation  is  given :  “The  ukase  of  March  26, 

1861,  granted  to  the  Kingdom  a  separate  Council  of  State, 
the  autonomy  of  the  governments,  districts  and  towns,  the 
direction  of  the  public  worship  and  of  education,  and  finally  a 
reform  of  the  University  system.  Marquis  Alexander  Wie¬ 
lopolski,  who  was  known  for  his  anti-German  and  anti-Aus¬ 
trian  ideas,  a  sincere  partisan  of  a  loyal  entente  with  Russia, 
was  made  director  of  the  Public  worship.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  government  closed  the  Agricultural  Society  which 
had  grouped  round  it  the  moderate  patriots,  surnamed  the 
“Whites,”  who  were  opposed  to  all  armed  rising.  The  Mar¬ 
quis,  unable  to  get  on  with  the  imperial  lieutenants,  sent  in 
his  resignation.  Called  to  Petersburg,  he  used  all  his  po¬ 
litical  ability  in  trying  to  get  back  for  Poland  its  complete 
autonomy.  He  came  back  to  Warsaw  during  the  summer  of 

1862,  with  the  new  Imperial  Lieutenant,  the  Grand  Duke  Con¬ 
stantine,  and  charged  with  full  powers.  Created  vice-presi¬ 
dent  of  the  Administration  Council,  which  meant  head  of  a 
civil  government,  he  set  to  work  immediately  to  accomplish 
his  projects:  equal  rights  for  the  Jews  and  the  reform  of  the 
educational  system.”  In  other  words  Poland  had  only  this 
single  opportunity  to  give  the  Poles  liberties  and  at  once 
took  advantage  of  it.  After  the  uprising  of  1863,  Russia  re¬ 
nounced  the  Polish  decree  and  never  again  allowed  Poland 
freedom  of  action  in  regard  to  the  treatment  of  Jews. 


10 


II. 


The  Jadwin  and  Johnson  Report 


American  Commission  to  Negotiate  Peace 
Mission  to  Poland, 

Paris,  October  31,  1919. 

American  commission  to  negotiate  peace. 

Gentlemen:  1.  The  mission  to  Poland  (consisting 
of  Mr.  Henry  Morgenthau,  Brig.  Gen.  Edgar  Jad¬ 
win,  and  Mr.  Homer  H.  Johnson)  was  named  for  the 
purpose  of  carrying  out  and  investigation  of  ques¬ 
tions  the  relations  between  the  Jewish  and  the  non- 
Jewish  elements  in  the  Republic.  Accompanied  by 
its  working  personnel,  the  mission  remained  in  Po¬ 
land  from  July  13,  1919,  to  September  13,  1919,  and 
visited  the  scenes  of  the  most  widely  reported  ex¬ 
cesses,  studied  economic  conditions  in  the  local 
centers  of  production  and  distribution,  consulted 
Polish  statesmen  and  Jewish  men  of  affairs,  ob¬ 
served  living  conditions  among  the  common  people, 
associated  with  officers  of  the  army,  and,  consider¬ 
ing  always  the  historical  environment  influencing 
the  nature,  aims,  and  disposition  of  the  Polish  Na¬ 
tion,  endeavored  to  arrive  at  a  just  understanding 
of  the  present  relations  between  the  component  ele¬ 
ments  of  the  Republic.  The  mission  owes  its  thanks 
to  Gen.  Pilsudski,  the  chief  of  state,  Mr.  Paderewski, 
president  of  the  council  of  ministers,  and  to  the 
Polish  authorities  in  general  for  the  facilities  con¬ 
tributed  toward  the  execution  of  its  task,  and  is 
also  indebted  to  Mr.  Hugh  Gibson,  American  minis¬ 
ter  to  Poland,  for  his  aid.  In  all  localities  visited, 
the  Jewish  communities  extended  to  the  mission 
their  full  confidence  and  co-operation. 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  most  of  the 
time  of  the  mission  in  Poland  was  taken  up 
in  the  examination  of  complaints  made  by  or 
in  behalf  of  Jewish  citizens  of  Poland,  and 
that  the  material  as  to  excesses  is  largely 
.  based  on  ex  parte  statements.  While  it  was 
the  original  intention  of  the  mission  to  give 
the  Polish  Government  an  opportunity  for 
detailed  rebuttal,  the  relatively  small  extent 
of  the  excesses  themselves,  as  compared  with 
the  largest  elements  contributing  to  anti-Semi¬ 
tism,  and  the  importance  of  a  remedy,  seemed 
to  make  such  rebuttal  unnecessary.  Within 
the  boundaries  of  Congress  Poland  only  18 
Jews  lost  their  lives,  while  in  the  whole  terri¬ 
tory  now  controlled  or  occupied  by  the  Polish 
Republic  the  grand  total  of  deaths  from  ex¬ 
cesses  in  which  anti-Semitism  was  a  factor 
has  not  exceeded  300. 

We  were  able  to  arrive  at  our  conclusions  from 
the  data  furnished  by  Jewish  sources,  from  answers 
to  specific  questions  addressed  to  various  Polish 
ministries,  from  many  conferences  with  other  Po¬ 


lish  citizens,  and  from  utterances  in  the  Polish  press, 
and  believe  that  those  sources  sufficiently  disclosed 
the  nature  and  causes  of  anti-Jewish  disturbances 
without  further  pro-Polish  evidence. 

After  the  return  of  the  mission  to  Paris  its  mem¬ 
bers  were  unable  to  consult  together  on  account  of 
the  absence  of  Gen.  Jadwin  on  other  duty  in  south¬ 
ern  Russia.  Mr.  Morgenthau  before  leaving  Paris 
submitted  a  report  representing  his  views  of  the 
situation,  and  the  other  members,  in  his  absence, 
have  prepared  these  considerations,  which,  while 
differing  but  slightly  from  Mr.  Morgenthau’s,  have 
been  put  in  the  form  of  a  complete  report  as  leading 
up  to  conclusions  which  differ  from  those  of  Mr. 
Morgenthau. 

2.  Polish  opinion  characterizes  the  tradi¬ 
tional  attitude  of  Poland  toward  the  Jews  as 
one  of  tolerance.  When  the  Jews  in  western 
Europe  fell  a  prey  to  persecutions  induced  by 
the  fresh  wave  of  fanaticism  incident  to  the 
Crusades,  they  migrated  in  large  numbers  to 
Poland  as  a  place  of  refuge,  where  the  Jewish 
communities  received  numerous  special  privi¬ 
leges,  and  possessed  almost  complete  local 
government.  This  internal  independence 
lasted  until  early  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
when  it  was  finally  so  reduced  as  to  apply  to 
religious  and  educational  matters  only.  The 
memory  of  former  independence  within  the 
limits  of  the  State  plays  a  considerable  role 
in  the  present,  aspirations  of  certain  Jewish 
parties  for  autonomy  with  the  right  to  receive 
and  expend  a  pro  rata  part  of  State  revenue. 
The  traditional  concentration  of  the  Jews  in 
their  communities,  due  to  the  necessity  of 
maintaining  close  connection  with  the  syna¬ 
gogue,  has  given  further  impetus  to  the  spirit 
of  separatism  and  cleavage  from  the  rest  of 
the  population,  which  aggravates  the  Jewish 
question  at  the  moment.  It  is  frequently  al¬ 
leged  that  even  in  the  Middle  Ages  Jewish 
separatism,  commercial  competition  and  ac¬ 
quisitiveness  aroused  a  certain  irritation 
among  the  Polish  masses,  which  has  persisted 
as  an  inherited  prejudice  to  the  present  day. 

With  the  accession  of  Nicholas  1  (1825),  perse¬ 
cution  of  the  Jews  began  with  the  official  sanction 
of  the  Russian  Empire,  and  continued  until  Nicho¬ 
las  was  succeeded  by  Alexander  II.  In  harmony 
with  the  latter’s  liberal  policy,  decrees  were  pub¬ 
lished  in  1862  completely  emancipating  the  Jews, 
but  after  the  reaction  from  the  insurrection  of  1863, 
in  which,  at  least  in  Warsaw,  many  Jews  fought 
shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the  Poles,  these  laws  be¬ 
came  a  dead  letter.  Though  frequently  invoked  as 


11 


a  proof  of  Polish  tolerance,  they  have  provided  since 
that  time  no  essential  guarantees  of  Jewish  rights.1 
During  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
conditions  in  Poland  were  further  complicated  by 
the  rigid  enforcement  of  the  pale  of  settlement.  The 
original  prohibition  to  settle  outside  the  pale  had 
been  so  modified  under  Alexander  II  as  to  allow 
wealthy  Jewish  merchants,  Jewish  holders  of  uni¬ 
versity  degrees,  and  Jewish  artisans,  to  reside  in  the 
interior  provinces  of  Russia.  This  concession  was 
counterbalanced  by  the  laws  of  May,  1882,  forbid¬ 
ding  Jews  to  reside  in  the  country  districts  and  small 
towns  of  the  pale,  and  crowding  them  into  the  cities 
where  their  coreligionists  were  already  congested. 
At  the  same  time,  the  expulsion  of  Jewish  artisans 
from  Moscow  aggravated  the  abnormal  concentra¬ 
tion  of  this  section.  The  result  of  these  conditions 
was  a  sharpening  of  competition  between  Jew  and 
non-Jew  in  the  districts  where  both  elements  lived 
side  by  side.  The  lack  of  opportunity  for  the  Jew 
to  engage  in  production  drove  him  into  small  trad¬ 
ing,  a  business  already  overflowing  and  incapable 
of  providing  a  livelihood  for  even  a  small  number 
of  newcomers.  Even  before  the  war,  the  mass  of 
Polish  Jewry  had  to  struggle  for  their  daily  bread, 
and  in  addition  to  commercial  rivalry,  popular  re¬ 
sentment  against  them  was  further  accentuated  by 
their  religious  separatism  and  their  differences  in 
dress,  dietary  habits,  and  Sabbath  observances. 

3.  To  the  basic  factors  of  the  present  situation 
must  be  added  the  cross-currents  of  factional  aspira¬ 
tions  and  international  intrigue  caused  by  the  Great 
War.  During  the  German  occupation  of  Poland, 
the  Germanic  character  of  the  Yiddish  vernacular 
and  the  readiness  of  certain  Jewish  elements  to 
enter  into  relations  with  the  winning  side  induced 
the  enemy  to  employ  Jews  as  agents  for  various 
purposes  and  to  grant  the  Jewish  population  not 
only  exceptional  protection,  but  also  the  promise  of 
autonomy.  It  is  alleged  that  the  Jews  were  active 
in  speculation  in  foodstuffs,  which  was  encouraged 
by  the  armies  of  occupation  with  a  view  to  facilitat¬ 
ing  export  to  Germany  and  Austria.  Notwithstand¬ 
ing  the  patriotic  attitude  assumed  by  many  promi¬ 
nent  Jews,  the  number  of  Hebrews  employed  by 
the  German  forces  and  occasional  cases  of  denuncia¬ 
tion  by  Jews  added  fuel  to  the  flame  of  prejudice. 
A  sensitive  Polish  nationalism  has  been  resentful 
of  any  self-assertion  from  a  minority  whose  very 
language  recalls  the  heavy  hand  of  the  oppressor. 

It  is  not  merely  for  his  alleged  German  sympa¬ 
thies  that  the  Jew  is  regarded  with  antipathy,  but 
also  for  his  supposed  relations  with  the  Bolsheviks. 
The  Polish  masses  and  soldiery  who  have  come  in 
contact  with  bolshevism  class  the  Jews  as  its  sup¬ 
porters,  and  at  Pinsk,  Lida,  and  Wilna,  where  seri¬ 
ous  excesses  occurred  concurrently  with  military 
operations,  their  argument  was  in  each  case  ad¬ 
vanced  by  local  military  authorities  in  partial  ex¬ 
planation  of  the  occurrences.  It  is  also  often  as¬ 
serted  that  the  chiefs  of  the  Bolshevist  movement 
in  Russia  are  Jews  of  Poland  or  Lithuania  and  there 
is  no  doubt  that  they  played  a  prominent  part  in 


the  Bolshevik  government  ot  such  cities  as  Wilna, 
Lida,  and  Minsk  before  the  capture  of  these  cities 
by  the  Polish  Army.  The  program  of  the  Jewish 
Socialist  belonging  to  the  Bund  Party  is  also  ad¬ 
duced  as  a  proof  of  Jewish  sympathy  with  the  Bol¬ 
sheviks,  though  since  the  Russian  revolution  the 
Bund  has  allied  itself  with  the  moderate  element 
(Mensheviki)  among  the  Russian  Socialists.  It 
may  be  questioned  whether  undue  arbitrary  general¬ 
ization  has  not  been  resorted  to  by  elements  hostile 
to  the  Jew  in  defining  the  Jewish  political  stand¬ 
point.  It  is  no  more  fair  to  brand  all  Jews  as  Bol¬ 
sheviks  because  some  of  them  support  the  Soviets 
than  to  class  all  Poles  as  Jew-baiters  because  some 
of  their  military  forces  or  of  their  lawless  civil " 
elements  have  occasionally  been  guilty  of  depreda¬ 
tions  and  violence. 

The  alien  sympathies  attributed  to  the  Jew 
vary  with  the  racial  problems  in  different 
sections  of  the  country.  Under  the  Austrian 
regime  the  situation  of  the  Jews  in  Galicia 
had  been  favorable.  But  when  the  Haps- 
burg  monarchy  crumbled,  and  the  struggle 
broke  out  between  Pole  and  Ukrainian  for 
the  possession  of  Lemberg  and  eastern  Ga¬ 
licia,  the  neutrality  professed  by  a  portion  of 
the  Jewish  population  resulted  in  increased 
hostility  toward  the  Jew.  The  waiting  game 
dictated  at  this  juncture  by  the  Jewish  sense 
of  expediency  was  interpreted  by  the  Poles  as 
Ukrainian  partisanship.  The  disorders  of 
November  21  to  23  in  Lemberg  became,  like 
the  excesses  in  Lithuania,  a  weapon  of  foreign 
anti-Polish  propaganda.  The  press  bureau 
of  the  Central  Powers,  in  whose  interest  it 
lay  to  discredit  the  Polish  Republic  before 
the  world,  permitted  the  publication  of 
articles  like  that  in  the  “Neue  Freie  Presse” 
of  November  30,  1918,  in  which  an  eyewitness 
estimated  the  number  of  victims  between 
2,500  and  3,000,  although  the  extreme  number 
furnished  by  the  local  Jewish  committee 
was  76. 

As  the  result  of  the  war,  the  natural  depression 
of  industry  and  commercial  life  has  also  become  a 
peculiar  incident  of  anti-Semitism.  The  use  of  the 
country  as  a  battlefield  by  foreign  armies,  who  re¬ 
quisitioned  and  plundered  all  available  material, 
who  made  it  difficult  for  the  Jewish  merchant,  first, 
to  secure  goods  with  which  to  deal,  and  second,  to 
charge  other  than  high  prices  for  them.  When  the 
merchant  is  able  to  secure  a  stock  of  goods  the  very 
fact  that  he  has  them  in  his  possession,  and  that  he 
is  compelled  to  charge  abnormal  prices,  tends  to  the 
popular  conviction  that  he  is  a  profiteer.  The  pre¬ 
vailing  monetary  insecurity  also  renders  barter 
necessary  and  merchandising  difficult,  while  the 
Jewish  merchant,  thus  hampered  in  his  business,  is 
met  by  the  increasing  prejudice  growing  out  of  the 
abnormal  conditions  of  war  under  which  his  trading 
must  be  carried  on. 

Some  Poles  have  stated  that  the  Jews  permit  a 
different  standard  of  business  deportment  in  deal- 


12 


ings  with  non-Jews,  and  that  they  are  thus,  outside 
of  passing  conditions,  responsible  for  existing  preju¬ 
dice.  This  is  vigorously  denied  by  the  Jews.  Fur¬ 
thermore,  the  use  of  economic  questions  with  racial 
attachments  for  political  arguments  contributes  to 
perpetuating  an  issue  which,  as  a  result  of  passing 
circumstances,  should  disappear  with  renewed  eco¬ 
nomic  activity. 

4.  The  modern  Polish  State  consists,  or  may  con¬ 
sist  when  its  boundaries  are  fixed,  of  five  distinct 
sections :  Congress  Poland,  Poznania,  Galicia  (east¬ 
ern  and  western),  and  portions  of  Lithuania  and 
White  Russia,  Minsk,  Grodno,  Volhynia,  and  part 
of  Vitebsk.  The  proportion  of  Jews  varies  from 
less  than  1  per  cent  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of 
the  Prussian  boundary  to  75  per  cent  in  the  White 
Russian  city  of  Pinsk.  Out  of  441  census  divisions, 
there  are  about  13  in  which  the  Jews  exceed  20  per 
cent  of  the  population.  The  old  Russian  provinces 
of  Minsk  and  Volhynia  have  the  largest  percentage 
of  Jewish  inhabitants.  In  general,  the  percentage 
of  Jews  increases  toward  the  eastward,  and  with 
the  exception  of  Warsaw,  Lodz,  and  some  smaller 
cities  in  Congress  Poland,  is  largest  in  the  region 
running  northeast  from  Warsaw  to  Wilna,  and  in 
the  district  extending  south  from  Minsk  across  the 
Prypec  toward  the  Dniester  River.  This  concentra¬ 
tion  is  due  to  the  Russian  laws  confining  the  Jews 
within  the  Provinces  making  up  the  river  systems  of 
the  Dnieper  and  the  Niemen,  and  to  the  gradual 
eviction  of  the  Jews  from  interior  Russian  cities 
into  this  so-called  pale  of  settlement.  Except  in 
the  cities,  the  proportion  of  Jews  in  Congress  Po¬ 
land  does  not  exceed  10  per  cent  of  the  population, 
and  with  the  cities  included  about  15  per  cent  is 
Jewish. 

The  percentage  of  Poles  in  Congress  Poland,  ex¬ 
cept  in  the  cities  where  Jews  have  settled,  rises 
about  75  per  cent.  West  of  Posen,  toward  the 
Prussian  boundary,  the  proportion  of  Poles  shades 
off  to  25  per  cent  and  less.  A  fairly  distinct  belt  of 
Polish-speaking  people  extends  north  to  Danzig 
and  the  edge  of  Pomerania.  Owing  to  the  extreme 
variations  in  the  Russian  census  of  1897  and  1909 
for  Lithuania  and  the  Ukraine,  it  is  difficult  to  give 
accurate  figures  as  to  the  Polish  population  east  of 
the  Bug  River.  In  Lithuania,  with  the  exception  of 
Wilna  and  environs,  the  proportion  of  Poles  no¬ 
where  passes  25  per  cent.  In  Wilna  itself  the  Poles 
are  variously  estimated  at  20  to  43  per  cent,  with 
some  present  claims  as  high  as  55  per  cent.  In 
W  hite  Russia,  on  the  contrary,  the  Polish  popula¬ 
tion  is  extremely  small,  especially  in  the  Province 
of  Minsk,  where  it  does  not  exceed  10  per  cent,  al¬ 
though  the  city  of  Minsk  has  about  25  per  cent.  In 
western  Galicia,  centering  about  Cracow,  the  Poles 
reach  75  per  cent,  while  in  eastern  Galicia  they  share 
the  territory  about  equally  with  the  Ukrainians, 
though  retaining  considerable  superiority  in  the  city 
of  Lemberg  itself.  There  has  been  a  distinct  east¬ 
ward  drift  to  Polish  emigration,  so  that  Polish  in¬ 
filtrations  appear  as  far  east  as  Kiev  and  the  Prov¬ 
ince  of  Mohilev.  Owing  to  peculiar  agrarian  condi¬ 


tions,  the  Poles  before  the  war  held  nearly  half  of  all 
real  estate  in  Lithuania  and  Ukraine. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  percentage  of  popula¬ 
tion  in  the  various  sections  of  what  is  now  Poland, 
or  what  may  be  Poland,  adds  to  the  general  com¬ 
plexity  of  the  influences  entering  into  the  problem 
of  anti-Semitism.  Naturally  the  relations  in  the 
eastern  districts  now  held  by  Poland  are  affected, 
not  only  by  the  percentage  of  Jews,  but  by  the  small 
proportion  of  Polish  inhabitants  in  these  sections. 
The  attitude  of  the  various  elements  of  the  popula¬ 
tion  and  the  play  of  sentiment  as  to  the  political 
future  of  the  country  further  contribute  to  this 
puzzling  complexity.  In  spite  of  considerable  agita¬ 
tion,  no  serious  difficulty  exists  in  Posen,  and  even 
in  Congress  Poland  there  is  little  disturbance  of 
fundamental  relations.  But  in  view  of  the  uncer¬ 
tainty  as  to  whether  the  regions  in  the  East  are 
to  be  Polish,  Russian,  or  independent,  it  is  readily 
seen  that  the  relation  of  the  Jew  to  the  eventual 
political  disposition  of  these  territories  is  still  an 
irritating  element.  These  same  problems  are  to 
some  extent  inherent  in  every  other  country  where 
the  Jewish  character  and  habits  develop  a  racial 
solidarity,  necessarily  accompanied  by  an  economic 
and  social  intermingling  with  the  other  elements  of 
the  population. 

5.  The  Jewish  situation  is  rendered  more 
difficult  by  the  efforts  of  certain  malicious 
German  influences  to  further  their  eastern 
projects  by  discrediting  Poland  financially 
and  otherwise.  It  is  not  to  the  interest  of 
the  German  State  to  allow  Poland  to  become 
a  powerful  and  prosperous  competitor,  since 
Poland  is  more  favorably  situated  to  act  as  a 
center  of  exchange  between  Russia  and  the 
west.  There  are  also  conservative  elements 
among  Russian  statesmen  who  are  equally 
anxious  to  prevent  foreign  financial  aid  to  Po¬ 
land  and  are  using  criticism  of  the  Polish 
State  as  a  weapon  to  forestall  the  assistance 
of  the  allied  and  associated  powers.  If  Po¬ 
land  is  to  become  a  firmly  established  State, 
the  needs  of  the  Republic  must  be  considered 
from  the  angle  of  Polish  national  aspirations 
and  rights,  and  not  simply  on  the  basis  of  the 
purposes  of  its  temporarily  paralyzed  neigh¬ 
bors  to  the  east  and  west. 

In  common  with  all  free  Governments  of 
the  world,  Poland  is  faced  with  the  danger  of 
the  political  and  international  propaganda  to 
which  the  war  has  given  rise.  The  coloring, 
the  suppression,  and  the  invention  of  news, 
the  subornation  of  newspapers  by  many  dif¬ 
ferent  methods,  and  the  poisoning  by  secret 
influences  of  the  instruments  affecting  public 
opinion,  in  short,  all  the  methods  of  malevo¬ 
lent  propaganda  are  a  menace  from  which 
Poland  is  a  notable  sufferer.  This  applies  to 
propaganda  both  at  home  and  from  abroad. 
While  the  Polish  press  as  a  whole  may  not 
be  charged  with  irresponsibility,  it  has  in 
general  gone  to  the  extreme  of  political  pro- 


13 


priety,  and  many  of  its  organs  nave  passed 
far  beyond  that  limit,  to  the  great  detriment 
of  their  country. 

6.  Poland  is  beset  by  the  confusion  of  ideas  and 
the  degeneration  of  popular  morale,  caused  by 
decades  of  political  tyranny  and  made  acute  by  five 
vears  of  war.  For  over  100  years  all  sections  of 
"Poland  have  been  ruled  by  despotisms  of  varying 
severity,  and  the  people  at  large  have  been  accus¬ 
tomed  to  identify  the  Government  not  with  the 
manifestation  of  majority  opinion,  but  with  personal 
rule  by  ukase  and  decree.  The  Jews  suffer  from  the 
fact  that  the  Polish  Government  substituting  popu¬ 
lar  government  for  despotic  rule,  lacks  the  will  or 
the  power  to  protect  them,  and  have  been  ready  to 
invoke  external  aid  in  order  to  exact  from  the 
Polish  authorities  protection  of  themselves  not  as  a 
minority,  but  because  of  their  racial  allegiance. 
;Some  representatives  of  the  Jewish  national  move¬ 
ment  who  have  been  conspicuously  active  refuse  to 
subordinate  the  Jewish  question  to  the  general 
needs'  of  the  Polish  State.  The  fault  in  this  regard 
does  not  lie  entirely  on  the  Jewish  side,  since  the 
question  once  raised  was  eagerly  picked  up  by  the 
National  Democratic  Party.  The  voluntary  separa¬ 
tion  of  the  Jew  from  purely  Polish  interests  has  led, 
in  localities  where  other  problems  of  nationality 
exist,  to  arbitrary  identification  of  the  Jews  with 
anti-Polish  elements.  So  long  as  nationality  is  an 
issue,  the  Jew  who  does  not  declare  himself  Polish 
’is  regarded  as  the  ally  of  any  visible  alien  factor. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  view  of  the  uncertainty  of  the 
final  disposition  of  White  Russia,  Lithuania,  and 
Galicia,  the  difficulties  besetting  the  Jews  in  these 
regions  have  been  undeniably  very  great.  Yet, 
since  the  Jews  are  enjoying  the  protection  of  the 
growing  Polish  State,  the  Poles  claim  that  they  owe 
active  personal  support  to  the  Government  that  in¬ 
sures  them  liberty  and  commercial  opportunity. 
The  numerical  inferiority  of  the  Jews  in  what  is  un¬ 
deniably  Poland  has  at  the  same  time  proved  no 
check  to  their  political  assertiveness.  The  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  profit  by  an  occasional  balance  of  power 
iplaqned  to  excuse  the  maintenance  of  a  Jewish  na¬ 
tional  party  does  not  appear  to  justify  perpetuating 
so  great  an  irritation  and  such  a  separation  of  the 
Jews  from  the  customary  divisions  of  modern 
politics. 

We  may  here  refer  with  propriety  to  the 
report  of  the  inter-allied  commission  on  Po¬ 
land,  of  which  Prof.  R'.  H.  Lord  and  Gen. 
Kernan  were  the  American  members,  and  to 
whose  statements  on  the  Polish  problem  it  is 
desired  to  invite  special  attention.  The  ac¬ 
count  of  the  Jewish  parties  supplied  by  the 
Italian  member  of  that  commission  has  been 
found  very  helpful  and  substantially  accur¬ 
ate.  He  invited  the  most  important  parties 
to  submit  any  extensions  or  corrections  which 
they  desired  to  make,  but  no  further  informa¬ 
tion  was  supplied.  As  hereafter  appears, 
most  of  the  questions  raised  and  of  the  sug¬ 
gestions  made  in  the  report  on  Poland  have 


been  met,  in  our  judgment,  by  tne  free  ac¬ 
ceptance  of  the  minorities  treaty  by  the  Po¬ 
lish  Government  and  people. 

We  have,  however,  found  some  evidence  of  a 
disposition  both  in  Poland  and  abroad  to  keep  alive 
the  controversy  on  the  possible  theory  that  focusing 
attention  upon  Poland  will  promote  better  treat¬ 
ment  of  the  Jew.  We  feel  that  this  doctrine  of  con- 
troversialism  is  founded  on  extremely  dubious 
grounds,  and  that  there  should  be  no  Jewish  prob¬ 
lem,  aside  from  the  general  responsibility  to  the 
fundamental  provisions  which  the  Poles  have  agreed 
shall  become  part  of  their  policy  toward  minorities. 
The  ideal  should  be  to  have  one  and  only  one  class 
of  citizens  politically  with  complete  freedom  in  re¬ 
ligious  matters. 

7.  The  question  of  popular  education  presents 
some  possible  difficulty.  From  American  experi¬ 
ence  it  is  concluded  that  the  public  school,  with 
universal  instruction  in  the  national  vernacular,  is 
one  of  the  strongest  forces  toward  the  creation  of 
a  homogeneous  body  of  citizens,  speaking  one  lan¬ 
guage  and  expressing  themselves  on  the  basis  of  a 
common  complex  of  social  and  political  notions 
however  much  they  differ  on  religious  and  cultural 
questions.  In  order  that  the  Jew  may  fully  enjoy 
his  privileges  and  faithfully  fulfill  his  obligations  as 
a  citizen,  he  must  understand  them  in  the  same 
sense  as  his  Polish  neighbor.  It  is  by  means  of 
public  schools  that  Poland  will  lose  its  approximate 
85  per  cent  of  illiterates,  and  teach  its  people,  not 
only  common  school  subjects,  but  also  the  great 
principles  of  liberty  and  the  rights  of  man,  and  by 
raising  the  level  of  popular  knowledge  arrive  at  a 
point  where  it  can  draw  its  State  officials  from  the 
people  at  large,  who  will,  by  association  in  their 
school  years,  have  acquired  a  common  understand¬ 
ing  impervious  to  propaganda  or  prejudice.  While, 
therefore,  the  adoption  of  the  treaty  was  essential 
to  the  integrity  of  Poland,  it  will  in  carrying  out 
the  educational  paragraphs  be  well  for  Poles  and 
lews  to  keep  in  mind  American  experience  in  public 
school  development,  and  carefully  to  weigh  the 
question,  whether  the  permanency  of  the  separate 
school  plan  will  be  advisable. 

8.  As  to  specific  cases  of  violence  leading  to  loss 
of  life  we  invite  attention  to  article  6  of  Mr.  Mor- 
genthau’s  report,  where  the  main  facts  are  stated. 
Some  additional  considerations  must  be  further 
recorded  and  especially  that  the  excesses  mostly 
took  place  either  when  the  Republic  was  in  process 
of  organization  or  under  the  stress  of  military  oper¬ 
ations.  For  example,  the  outbreak  in  Kielce  oc¬ 
curred  on  the  day  of  the  armistice,  November  11, 
1918.  A  Jewish  meeting  called-in  support  of  Jewish 
nationalism,  which  was  easily  rumored  to  be  in  op¬ 
position  to  Polish  national  independence,  was 
broken  up  with  fatal  results  to  four  people  and  in¬ 
jury  to  many  others  just  after  the  city  had  been 
evacuated  by  the  Austrian  troops  and  before  the 
Polish  authorities  existed  to  organize  a  service  of 
security.  At  Lemberg,  while  the  outbreaks  occurred 
a  little  later,  November  21-23,  1918,  it  was  at  the 


14 


end  of  hostilities  between  the  Polish  and  Ukrainian 
elements  of  the  population. 

‘The  Pinsk  outrage,  April  5,  1919,  was  30 
days  after  the  capture  of  the  town  from  the 
Bolsheviks  by  the  Poles,  but  was  a  purely 
military  affair.  Phe  town  commander  with 
judgment  unbalanced  by  fear  of  a  bolshevik 
uprising  of  which  he  had  been  forewarned  by 
two  Jewish  soldier  informers  sought  to  ter¬ 
rorize  the  Jewish  population  (about  75  per 
cent  of  the  whole)  by  the  execution  of  35 
Jewish  citizens  without  investigation  or  trial, 
by  imprisoning  and  beating  others  and  by 
wholesale  threats  against  all  Jews.  No  share 
in  this  action  can  be  attributed  to  any  military 
official  higher  up,  to  any  of  the  Polish  civil 
officials,  or  to  the  few  Poles  resident  in  that 
district  of  White  Russia. 

The  Czestochowa  riots  on  May  27,  1919,  while 
based  on  the  supposed  shooting  of  a  Polish  soldier 
by  a  Jew,  was  not  connected  with  a  military  opera¬ 
tion  and  occurred  after  both  military  and  civil  gov¬ 
ernment  had  been  established.  Only  after  five 
deaths  was  the  outbreak  arrested.  These  five  deaths 
are  the  only  fatalities  from  mob  violence  in  Con¬ 
gress  Poland  discovered  or  reported  to  us  since  the 
establishment  of  a  stable  government  in  the  Re¬ 
public.” 

The  military  operations  of  the  Polish  Army  in 
the  taking  of  Lida  (April  17,  1919),  of  Wilna  (April 
21,  1919),  and  of  Minsk  (August  8,  1919)  in  consid¬ 
eration  of  the  facts  of  its  organization,  that  it  was 
still  poorly  organized,  unequipped,  underofficered 
and  undisciplined  would  not  have  been  so  noticeably 
irregular  even  though  civilian  deaths  were  consid¬ 
erable  and  robberies  large,  except  for  the  fact  that 
those  killed  and  robbed  were  practically  all  Jews 
Nor  is  it  explained  by  the  fact  that  most  of  the 
shops  in  those  cities  were  Jewish.  The  fact  that 
there  were  some  non-Jewish  establishments*  and 
that  none  of  them  were  disturbed  shows  an  intelli¬ 
gent  and  intentional  discrimination  on  the  part  of 
the  lawless  element  in  the  army  disclosing  a  racial 
antipathy  made  more  patent  by  the  desire  to  rob  and 
pillage,  which  was  apparently  felt  not  to  be  wrong 
or  at  least  not  to  be  severely  punished  by  superiors. 
In  Wilna  there  was  active  street  fighting  for  three 
days,  and  while  the  army  lost  3.3  the  civilian  loss 
was  65.  But  the  civilians  were  all  Jews,  and  many 
others  were  thereafter  deported  and  subject  to  hard 
ships  which  it  is  hard  to  justify  by  military  practice. 
In  support  of  the  conviction  that  there  had  been 
active  sympathy  with  the  Bolsheviks  by  Jews  and 
sniping  by  them  during  the  street  fighting  we  had 
many  statements  of  eye  witnesses  presented  to  us. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  a  highly  charged  at¬ 
mosphere  there  was  quite  enough  fault  on  both  sides 
to  explain  the  adherence  to  the  every-day  practices 
of  Russian  civil  warfare  as  it  is  reported  to  us  in  this 
almost  civil  -strife  on  Russian  territory  No  one 
would  attempt  to  justify  it.  Gen.  Jadwin  was  pres¬ 
ent  at  the  taking  of  Minsk  and  a  personal  witness 


to  the  strenuous  efforts  of  the  military  authorities 
toward  preventing  acts  of  violence.  The  results 
showed  definite  progress  among  the  military  in  the 
discipline  of  the  army  in  the  conception  of  their 
duty  toward  the  civilian  population  and  in  their 
ability  to  carry  it  out.  Proportionately  to  the  popu¬ 
lation  only  about  20  per  cent  as  many  were  killed 
as  at  Wilna.  A  large  percentage  of  those  were  in 
the  suburbs  and  out  of  reach  of  the  military  patrols 
in  the  city.  Part  of  those  in  the  town  were  the  re¬ 
sult,  according  to  bystanders’  statements,  of  shots 
directed  at  the  entering  troops  coming  from  a  cer¬ 
tain  meeting  house  in  which  Jews  had  congregated, 
and  five  of  them  were  killed.  Reported  bolshevik 
activity  and  sniping  with  the  desire  to  rob  explain 
most  of  the  cases  except  the  reprehensible  unbal¬ 
anced  conduct  of  one  petty  officer  who  killed  nine. 
Many  of  the  offenders  were  arrested  and  six  of  them 
were  sentenced  to  be  shot. 

Following  the  Minsk  experience,  improvement 
was  made  in  the  technique  of  handling  patrols  so 
that  further  reports  from  Rowno  and  Bobruisk,  sub¬ 
sequently  captured  by  the  Poles,  indicate  more  suc¬ 
cessful  precautions  against  maltreatment  of  the 
Jewish  population. 

In  practically  all  of  these  cases  inquiries 
have  been  regularly  undertaken  by  the  mili¬ 
tary  authorities,  by  the  civil  Government  of 
Poland,  and  in  several  by  direct  Diet  com¬ 
mittees.  The  local  civil  authorities  have  also 
followed  the  usual  processes  of  criminal  in¬ 
quiry,  and  the  cases  are  in  various  stages  of 
development.  In  several  the  inquiry  has  been 
followed  by  the  appropriation  of  damages  to 
those  who  have  suffered  loss. 

Payments  had  begun  to  be  made  in  Wilna, 
Pinsk,  and  Lemberg  before  our  departure 
from  Poland.  If  complaints  as  to  slowness 
and  uncertainty  of  military  and  Government 
punishment  and  relief  were  heard,  as  they 
were,  it  seemed  nevertheless  to  indicate  that 
orderly  process  of  government  was  in  opera¬ 
tion.  With  a  state  of  war  in  the  land  and  the 
many  vexing  problems  incident  to  Poland’s 
situation,  we  could  not  find  substantial 
ground  of  criticism  of  the  methods  of  pre¬ 
vention  and  relief  for  an  altogether  unhappy 
situation.  Patience  and  forbearance  must  be 
administered  to  all  sides  of  the  question,  with 
honest  effort  to  recover  their  war-torn  coun¬ 
try  as  soon  as  possible.  It  will  be  a  difficult 
matter  to  reassure  the  citizens  of  Poland  that 
the  outside  world  will  be  as  prompt  and  effi¬ 
cient  in  doing  its  duty — to  make  the  world 
safe  for  Poland  and  all  other  struggling 
democracies. 

9.  We  are  of  the  opinion,  in  view  of  the  previous 
training  of  the  Polish  soldiery  in  the  German,  Aus¬ 
trian,  and  Russian  Armies,  the  eastern  low  valua¬ 
tion  of  human  life,  the  want  of  food  and  clothing 
which  had  accompanied  the  breaking  up  of  the  Cen¬ 
tral  Powers,  and  the  universal  tenseness  of  popular 


15 


nerves  worn  by  the  vicissitudes  of  war,  that  the 
antagonism  felt  by  the  Polish  military  toward  the 
Jews  and  resulting  in  depredation  and  violence 
against  them  is  not  a  matter  of  surprise,  reprehen¬ 
sible  and  regrettable  as  it  is.  The  habits  of  mili¬ 
tary  warfare  still  obtaining  in  the  civil  war  in  Rus¬ 
sia,  and  these  military  excesses  in  Poland,  aggra¬ 
vated  as  they  were  by  civilian  mobs,  thoroughly 
justified  the  fear  and  anxiety  expressed  by  many 
Jews  lest  the  Poles  had  adopted  Czarist  and  bol¬ 
shevik  precedents  of  solving  any  question,  including 
that  of  Jewish  prejudice,  by  a  process  of  terror  and 
extermination.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  Polish  State 
that  it  has  apparently  passed  through  this  crisis 
of  organization,  though  still  under  the  baneful  in  • 
fluence  of  active  warfare,  without  realizing  this  sin¬ 
ister  expectation.  We  were  assured  by  many  repre¬ 
sentative  Jewish  delegations  that  while  they  were 
disturbed  by  the  anti-Jewish  feeling  still  incon¬ 
veniently  and  unjustly  exhibited,  they  did  not  fear 
for  their  lives  or  liberty;  that  they  recognize  their 
full  duty  as  Polish  citizens  with  all  the  responsi¬ 
bilities  and  privileges  that  pertain  thereto ;  that  all 
citizens  are  subject  to  the  rule  of  the  majority  in 
which  any  minority  must  acquiesce,  and  that  the 
only  remedy  beyond  this  is  the  appeal  to  the  con¬ 
science  of  the  majority  and  its  sense  of  justice  and 
fair  play.  This  uniting  in  the  making,  ratification, 
and  execution  of  this  treaty,  with  its  appeal  to  the 
League  of  Nations,  is  a  credit  to  Jew  and  non-Jew 
alike,  and  barring  the  accident  of  an  outside  con¬ 
flagration,  is  the  best  of  auguries  for  Poland’s  future 
success. 

10.  While  it  is  our  opinion  that  a  return  to  nor¬ 
mal  conditions  in  Poland  will  remove  most  of  the 
danger  of  the  Jewish  question,  it  is  recognized  that 
this  process  of  restoration  is  not  solely  dependent 
on  the  good  will  and  exertions  of  the  Poles  them¬ 
selves.  The  attention  of  Poland  must  be  diverted 
from  waging  war,  and  the  only  means  toward  this 
end  is  the  re-establishment  of  internal  peace  in  Rus¬ 
sia.  Until  this  result  is  obtained,  Poland  remains 
with  boundaries  undetermined,  forced  to  hold  and 
administer  a  large  territory,  the  inhabitants  of  which 
as  yet  have  no  fixed  nationality.  As  long  as  Poland 
wages  war,  the  Republic  is  a  prey  to  militaristic 
methods  and  open  to  the  peril  of  direct  action.  Un¬ 
til  its  army  is  reduced  to  a  peace  footing  the  problem 
of  overpopulation  and  underemployment  can  not  be 
solved.  While  a  third  of  the  meager  income  of  the 
State  is  expended  for  military  purposes,  adequate 
attention  can  not  be  devoted  to  internal  reconstruc¬ 
tion.  Until  Russia  is  at  peace  Poland  lacks  her  full 
field  for  trade  and  exchange,  and  therefore  can  not 
regain  her  economic  equilibrium,  while  an  oppor¬ 
tunity  for  emigration  to  an  open  and  liberal  Russia 
would  provide  an  outlet  for  the  surplus  population 
of  the  Republic.  With  a  stable  government  in  Rus¬ 
sia  firmly  allied  in  principle  with  the  allied  and  asso¬ 
ciated  powers,  an  end  would  be  made  to  the  German 
intrigue  that  is  seeking  to  substitute  Russia  for 
Austria-Hungary  as  a  field  of  exploitation  and  ac¬ 
cordingly  strives  to  discredit  Poland  as  a  dangerous 
competitor.  In  fact,  protection  afforded  minorities 


such  as  before  us  in  this  investigation  may  well 
bring  the  Russian  condition  where  this  problem  is 
the  protection  of  the  majority  against  a  minority 
based  on  a  difference  of  social  philosophy  and  wield¬ 
ing  power  by  seizure  of  the  instruments  of  war  and 
by  the  use  of  most  elementary  forms  of  force  and 
fear.  Is  not  the  duty  of  the  nations  as  clear  to 
determine  the  rule  of  the  majority  against  des¬ 
potism,  whether  one  or  many,  thus  preserving  do¬ 
mestic  tranquillity  as  well  as  freedom  from  foreign 
invasion?  Is  not  the  effect  of  domestic  disorder  in 
Russia  upon  Poland  and  upon  the  peace  of  the  world 
quite  as  important  a  subject  for  regulation  by  the 
nations  as  in  the  limitation  upon  the  majority’s 
treatment  of  minorities?  Is  not  the  solidarity  of 
nations  shown  quite  as  much  by  one  as  the  other, 
and  are  they  not  both  requisite  for  future  peace? 
The  foundation  of  an  enduring  government  in  Rus¬ 
sia  depends  on  the  certainty  that  no  minority, 
whether  autocratic  or  bolshevistic,  shall  ever  be 
able  to  exploit  the  inertia  of  the  masses  in  over¬ 
throwing  any  system  of  democracy  that  may  be  es¬ 
tablished  within  its  boundaries.  It  is  to  the  interest 
of  the  world  that  this  internal  security  shall  be  per¬ 
petuated,  and  the  rise  of  a  powerful  democracy  on 
the  eastern  frontier  of  Poland  will  insure  the  safety 
and  freedom  of  action  of  the  Republic. 

In  short,  once  the  military  threat  against- 
Poland  is  removed  and  the  territorial  uncer¬ 
tainty  of  the  Republic  is  ended,  the  nation 
will  be  able  to  concentrate  its  energies  on  in¬ 
ternal  problems  and,  by  the  course  of  natural 
development,  create  a  governmental  system 
insuring  equality,  protection,  and  prosperity 
to  all  elements  of  its  population.  The  mis¬ 
sion  thoroughly  believes  that  Poland  has  the 
raw  materials  of  citizenship  quite  equal  to 
this  accomplishment. 

11.  By  way  of  summary,  we  find  that  beginning 
with  the  armistice,  about  November  11,  1918,  and 
for  six  months  and  more  during  the  establishment  of 
orderly  government  in  Poland,  many  regrettable 
incidents  took  place  throughout  both  Congress  Po¬ 
land  and  the  regions  the  future  of  which  is  still  in 
doubt.  The  occurrences  in  Congress  Poland  were 
not  so  serious  in  number  of  deaths,  but  there  have 
been  violent  collisions  accompanied  by  riots,  beat¬ 
ings,  and  other  assaults  which  are  apparently  trace¬ 
able  in  large  part  to  anti-Jewish  prejudice.  In  every 
case  they  have  been  repressed  by  either  the  military 
or  the  civil  authorities,  but  only  after  grievous  re¬ 
sults.  In  the  territory  occupied  or  invaded  by  Po¬ 
lish  trooops,  civilian  mobs  have  followed  the  sol¬ 
diery,  and  the  two  elements  have  engaged  in  rob¬ 
bery  of  shops  and  dwellings,  and,  in  cases  where  re¬ 
sistance  was  offered,  in  assaulting  and  killing  the 
owners  or  occupants.  The  circumstances  of  some 
of  these  incidents  have  been  aggravated  by  intoxica¬ 
tion  due  to  the  looting  of  liquor  stores,  with  the 
usual  adjuncts  of  criminal  irresponsibility  and  mob 
rage.  We  believe  that  none  of  these  excesses  were 
instigated  or  approved  by  any  responsible  govern¬ 
mental  authority,  civil  or  military.  We  find,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  ths  history  and  the  attitude  of  the 


16 


Jews,  complicated  by  abnormal  economic  and  poli¬ 
tical  conditions  produced  by  the  war,  have  fed  the 
flame  of  anti-Semitism  at  a  critical  moment.  It  is 
believed,  however,  that  the  gradual  amelioration  of 
conditions  during  the  last  11  months  gives  great 
promise  for  the  future  of  the  Polish  Republic  as  a 
stable  democracy. 

12.  In  spite  of  the  existing  anti-Semitism  arising 
from  very  diverse  factors  we  are  convinced  that  re¬ 
ligious  differences  as  such  play  therein  a  relatively 
slight  role,  and  that  the  Polish  nation  is  disposed 
to  religious  tolerance  and  self-control  in  religious 
disagreements.  The  ending  of  the  war,  the  removal 
of  external  menace,  and  the  revival  of  industry  will 
reduce  the  present  common  irritation  caused  by 
abnormal  conditions. 

Jewish  business  men  have  also  assured  us  that 
with  the  restoration  of  trade,  industry,  and  banking, 
the  Poles  will  cease  to  employ  economic  pressure 
as  a  political  weapon. 

13.  In  addition  to  the  disposition  toward  tolerance 
evinced  in  the  presence  of  violent  party  controversy 
and  active  propaganda  from  abroad,  Poland  has 
accepted  the  minorities  clause  of  the  treaty  of  Ver¬ 
sailles,  guaranteeing  to  all  citizens  security  of  life 
and  property  and  equal  protection  of  the  laws.  De¬ 
spite  dissatisfaction  with  some  stipulations  of  this 
treaty,  a  determination  has  been  expressed  by  prom¬ 
inent  leaders  of  even  the  extremes  in  all  political 
camps  to  execute  it  faithfully. 

14.  The  duties  of  the  outside  world  toward  Po¬ 
land  are : 

(a)  To  establish  the  territorial  extent  of  the 
Polish  State.  Should  any  of  the  eastern  coun¬ 
try  which  contains  the  largest  proportion  of 
Jews,  revert  to  Russia,  the  problem  thus 
transferred  can  be  dealt  with  by  the  League 
of  Nations. 

( b )  To  protect  Poland  from  the  menace  of  ' 
external  interference  by  the  application  of 
article  10  of  the  covenant  of  the  League  of 
Nations. 

(c)  To  further  by  means  of  judiciously  ad¬ 
ministered  external  help  the  recovery  of  Po¬ 
land  from  five  years  of  war.  This  material 
aid,  in  the  nature  of  food,  clothing,  and  raw 
materials,  should  not  be  gratuitously  fur¬ 
nished  or  so  distributed  as  to  overtax  the  na¬ 
tional  credit  or  to  pauperize  the  population. 
In  accordance  with  President  Wilson’s  speech 
of  January  8,  1918,  Poland  should  be  freed 
from  the  limitation  of  all  economic  barriers 
and  raised  to  a  position  where  it  can  profit  by 
the  quality  of  trade  conditions  to  be  estab¬ 
lished  among  nations.  Since  no  country  can 
be  a  good  financial  risk  without  domestic 
tranquillity  and  freedom  from  invasion,  the 
fear  of  which  may  lead  to  over  expenditure 
and  competitive  armament,  this  security 
should  be  provided  for  the  good  of  Poland 
and  the  peace  of  the  world.  While  we  are 
convinced  that  Poland  will  abide  by  its  obli¬ 
gations  to  preserve  order  at  home,  the  pro- 

1  See  footnote  No.  5  after  Morgenthau  Report. 


tection  against  external  interference  is  the 
duty  of  the  League  of  Nations.  With  politi¬ 
cal  security,  industrial  peace,  and  an  open 
market  with  no  foreign  debt  not  offset  by  for¬ 
eign  receivables,  Poland,  safeguarded  by  the 
League  of  Nations  and  abundantly  provided 
as  she  is  with  natural  assets  in  property  and 
man  power,  becomes  an  excellent  commercial 
risk  for  foreign  capital. 

( d )  To  study  the  question  of  over  population  or 
under  industrialization,  not  at  all  local  to  Poland  but 
intimately  connected  with  its  future.  It  is  not 
healthy  for  Poland  to  pursue  a  policy  of  summer 
emigration  to  other  countries,  nor  is  it  desirable  that 
it  should  continue  a  heavy  emigration  to  America 
and  elsewhere.  It  is  a  process  from  which  the 
nation  is  still  suffering,  since  it  tends  to  take  the 
strong  and  leave  the  less  reliant.  Furhermore, 
with  the  present  development  of  the  world,  and  the 
beginning  of  new  thoughts  in  the  development  of 
nationalism,  if  emigration  from  Poland  is  to  be 
necessary,  the  question  as  to  whither  and  under 
what  conditions  it  shall  be  directed  becomes  pe¬ 
culiarly  subject  to  international  solution. 

If  Poland  by  her  own  initiative,  or  through  out¬ 
side  aid,  can  so  speed  up  and  direct  her  own  indus¬ 
trial  policy  as  to  absorb  the  potential  labor  supply, 
the  Republic  may  solve  the  question  under  new  con¬ 
ditions  of  political  and  economic  freedom. 

(c)  To  further  the  rapid  development  of  Polish 
education.  The  safety  of  the  masses  from  exploita¬ 
tion  through  the  sophistries  of  monarchism  or  of 
anarchism  depends  on  the  degree  of  enlightenment 
they  possess.  It  is  therefore  to  the  advantage  of 
the  League  of  Nations  to  see  instituted  a  campaign 
of  universal  education  toward  a  general  understand¬ 
ing  of  the  great  ideals  of  democracy  and  for  the  pro¬ 
tection  of  peoples  against  the  agitator  or  the  reac¬ 
tionary  who  deals  in  slogans  that  appeal  to  any 
populace  untrained  to  estimate  them  at  their  proper 
value. 

(/)  To  guarantee  to  Poland  the  disinterested  coun¬ 
sel  of  the  allied  democracies  based  on  their  previous 
experience.  Together  with  the  other  free  peoples 
of  the  world,  Poland  must  henceforth  grapple,  not 
only  with  abuses  of  the  outworn  autocratic  system, 
but  with  political  corruption,  graft,  party  degen¬ 
eracy,  and  yellow  journalism  joined  with  paid  prop¬ 
aganda.  The  opportunity  of  the  League  of  Nations 
for  the  comparative  study  of  democratic  methods 
and  policies,  reinforced  by  common  aims,  by  the 
full  development  of  international  feeling  and  the 
free  exchange  of  free  ideas,  will  react  not  only 
upon  Poland,  but  to  the  general  advantage  of  the 
entire  world.  The  greatest  need  at  this  crisis  is  the 
domestic  and  international  application  of  general 
principles  of  democratic  government  tested  by  use 
and  beaten  out  on  the  anvil  of  experience.  Its  high¬ 
est  and  broadest  attribute  is  that  force  shall  give 
way  to  thought — the  rule  of  reason  rather  than  the 
reign  of  terror.  Respectfully  submitted. 

EDGAR  JADWIN, 
Brigadier  General,  United  States  Army. 

HOMER  H.  JOHNSON. 


17 


The  Jewish  situation  is  rendered  more  difficult  by 
the  efforts  of  certain  malicious  German  influences  to 
further  their  eastern  projects  by  discrediting  Poland 
financially  and  otherwise.  It  is  not  to  the  interest  of 
the  German  State  to  allow  Poland  to  become  a  power¬ 
ful  and  prosperous  competitor,  since  Poland  is  more 
favorably  situated  to  act  as  a  center  of  exchange  be¬ 
tween  Russia  and  the  west.  There  are  also  conserva¬ 
tive  elements  among  Russian  statesmen,  who  are  equal¬ 
ly  anxious  to  prevent  foreign  financial  aid  to  Poland 
and  are  using  criticism  of  the  Polish  States  as  a  weapon 
to  forestall  the  assistance  of  the  allied  and  associated 
powers.  If  Poland  is  to  become  a  firmly  established 
State,  the  needs  of  the  Republic  must  be  considered 
from  the  angle  of  Polish  national  aspirations  and 
rights,  and  not  simply  on  the  basis  of  the  purposes  of 
its  temporarily  paralyzed  neighbors  to  the  east  and 
west. 

In  common  until  all  free  Governments  of  the  world, 
Poland  is  faced  with  the  danger  of  the  political  and 
international  propaganda  to  which  the  war  has  given 
rise.  The  coloring,  the  suppression,  and  the  invention 
of  news,  the  subornation  of  newspapers  by  many  dif¬ 
ferent  methods,  and  the  poisoning  by  secret  influences 
of  the  instruments  affecting  public  opinion,  in  short, 
all  the  methods  of  malevolent  propaganda  are  a  men¬ 
ace  from  which  Poland  is  a  notable  sufferer.  This 
applies  to  propaganda  both  at  home  and  from  abroad. 

— From  the  Report  of  General  Jadunn 
and  H.  H.  Johnson. 


18 


The  Reports 

of  the 

BRITISH  MISSION 


LETTER  OF  TRANSMITTAL 


Sir  H.  Rumbold,  British  Minister  to  Poland,  in  Submitting 
the  Report  of  the  British  Mission  to  His  Government. 


Sir  H.  Rumbold  to  Earl  Curzon 

Warsaw,  June  2,  1920. 


My  Lord, 

I  HAVE  the  honour  to  transmit  to  your  Lordship  herewith  Sir  Stuart  Samuel’s  report  on  his  mis¬ 
sion  to  Poland  to  investigate  the  massacres  and  general  ill-treatment  of  Jews  in  this  country.  Captain 
Wright,  who  was  also  a  member  of  Sir  Stuart  Samuel’s  mission,  has  submitted  a  separate  report,  which  I 
have  likewise  the  honour  to  enclose. 

When  the  Germans  evacuated  Poland  in  1918  a  civil  and  military  administration  had  to  be  set  up  by 
the  Poles.  It  is  obvious  that  this  administration  could  not  be  anything  but  defective  at  first.  The  execu¬ 
tive  was  weak  and  orders  issued  by  the  central  authorities  were  frequently  not  carried  out  in  the  provinces. 
This  absence  of  authority  after  four  years’  of  German  occupation  and  iron  rule  accounts,  perhaps,  to  a  cer¬ 
tain  degree  for  the  occurrence  of  excesses  against  the  Jews. 

It  is  also  necessary  to  remember  that  the  discipline  of  the  Polish  army  was  very  different  from  the  dis¬ 
cipline  of  armies  before  the  war.  The  excesses  against  the  Jews  were  described  as  pogroms  in  the  press 
of  Western  Europe,  but  it  can  be  here  remarked  that  the  word  “pogrom”  is  used  in  a  different  sense  in 
Poland  from  that  which  it  is  understood  to  convey  in  Western  Europe.  The  word  “pogrom”  conveys  to 
the  inhabitant  of  Western  Europe  massacres  or  excesses  against  a  portion  of  the  population  which  are  either 
organized  or  countenanced  by  the  authorities.  In  Poland  the  word  is  applied  to  disturbances  in  which  lives 
need  not  necessarily  be  lost. 

The  excesses  against  the  Jews  can  be  divided  from  a  geographical  point  of  view  into  two  categories: 
those  which  were  perpetrated  in  Poland  proper,  in  the  course  of  which  eighteen  Jews  lost  their  lives,  and 
those  which  took  place  in  the  war  zones  which,  in  November,  1918,  included  Lemberg,  and  where  the  ma¬ 
jority  of  the  murders  occurred.  Sir  Stuart  Samuel  estimates  the  total  number  of  lives  lost  at  not  less  than 
348,  so  that  330  Jews  were  killed  in  the  war  zone. 


19 


The  character  of  the  excesses  differs  considerably.  In  some  cases,  as  at  Lemberg,  the  Polish  mob, 
worked  up  by  the  fighting  which  took  place  for  the  possession  of  the  town,  of  set  purpose  attacked  many 
Jews,  killing  fifty-two,  wounding  many  more  and  doing  much  damage  to  Jewish  property.  Excesses  against 
the  Jews  on  a  larger  scale  also  occurred  in  the  following  places:  at  Kielce,  Pinsk,  Lida,  Vilna,  Kolbuszowa, 
in  Galicia,  Czenstochowa  and  Minsk. 

In  other  cases  there  was  a  sporadic  outbreak  causing  the  death  of  one  or  two  Jews.  In  many  instances 
the  excesses  took  the  form  of  more  or  less  serious  assaults  on  the  Jews,  such  as  cutting  off  beards,  throw¬ 
ing  out  of  trains,  etc.  But  in  view  of  the  weakness  of  the  central  administration  and  the  original  want  of 
discipline  in  the  Polish  army,  it  would  appear  that  the  authorities  could  not  be  held  responsible  for  the 
excesses,  and  these  therefore  lose  the  character  of  pogroms.  If  the  excesses  had  been  encouraged  or  organ¬ 
ized  by  the  civil  and  military  authorities  the  number  of  victims  would  probably  have  been  much  larger.  The 
excesses  are  deplorable  in  themselves,  and  it  is  a  matter  for  regret  that  the  authors  have  not,  so  far  as  is 
known  to  the  Legation,  been  brought  to  book. 

In  criticizing  the  general  condition  of  the  Jews  in  Poland,  it  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  that  their 
position  in  this  country  and  the  whole  of  Eastern  Europe  differs  very  much  from  that  of  their  position  in 
Western  Europe.  In  the  East  they  form  a  larger  percentage  of  the  population,  and  in  many  cases  they  form 
a  preponderating  element  in  the  towns,  so  that  it  is  only  natural  that  separatism  should  have  manifested 
itself.  This  was  strengthened  by  the  fact  that  the  occupations  of  the  Poles  differed  from  those  of  the  Jews. 
The  Poles  were  either  engaged  in  war  or  settled  on  the  land,  whilst  the  Jewish  communities  devoted 
themselves  exclusively  to  commerce.  To  this  must  be  added  the  difference  of  religion  and  the  encourage¬ 
ment  of  an  anti-Semitic  feeling,  owing  to  the  introduction  by  the  Russians  of  special  anti-Jewish  legislation. 


It  must  be  further  remembered  that,  under  the  influence  of  economic  changes  and  owing  to  the  fact  that 
since  1832  the  Poles  have  not  been  allowed  to  hold  posts  in  the  Government,  they  were  gradually  obliged  to 
take  to  trade,  and  competition  between  the  Jewish  population  and  the  Poles  commenced.  This  competition 
became  stronger  when  the  Russian  Government  allowed  co-operative  and  agricultural  societies  to  be  started 
in  Poland.  The  co-operative  movement  is  becoming  very  strong  and  will  undoubtedly  form  an  important 
factor  in  the  development  of  economic  relations  in  Poland,  so  that  indirectly  it  will  be  bound  to  affect  the 
position  of  the  small  Jewish  trader. 


Sir  Stuart  Samuel  would  appear  to  be  mistaken  in  his  appreciation  of  the  part  played  by  the 
Jews  in  the  pre-war  business  relations  between  Poland  and  Russia  and  in  the  industry  of  the  former 
country.  Whereas  it  is  true  that  goods  exported  from  Poland  were  to  a  large  extent  handled  by 
the  Jews,  only  a  small  percentage  of  those  goods  were  actually  manufactured  by  them.  The  cotton 
industry  in  Lodz  owes  its  development  more  to  the  Polish  industrial  community  of  German  extrac¬ 
tion  than  to  the  Jews. 

The  statement  that  initiative  in  business  matters  was  almost  entirely  a  prerogative  of  the  Jews  is 
exaggerated.  A  case  in  point  are  the  co-operatives,  which  are  exclusively  Polish. 

The  fact  of  Yiddish  being  akin  to  German  may  have  been  the  reason  why  the  Germans  employed 
a  large  number  of  Jews  during  their  occupation  of  Poland,  although  a  great  many  of  the  Poles  with 
a  good  knowledge  of  German  could  have  been  found.  There  is  this  difference,  however,  that  the 
Poles  only  served  the  Germans  by  compulsion,  as  they  considered  them  to  be  their  enemies.  This 
difference  may  account  for  the  policy  of  the  Polish  Government  in  relieving  many  Jews  who  served 
Germany  of  their  offices,  and  not  reinstating  them  whereas  no  such  procedure  was  applied  in  the  case 
of  the  Poles.  In  this  respect,  it  is  perhaps  interesting  to  point  out  that  quite  a  number  of  Poles 
belonging  to  the  so-called  “Activists,”  whose  sympathies  were  pro-German,  have  not  yet  obtained 
any  posts  under  the  present  Polish  Government. 

The  systematic  attempt — more  especially  by  provincial  authorities — to  oust  the  Jews  from  their 
trade  to  which  Sir  Stuart  Samuel  draws  attention  is  probably  due,  not  so  much  to  the  action  of  these 
authorities,  as  to  the  exceptional  development  of  the  co-operative  movement  in  Poland. 

In  so  far  as  the  Polish  Government  are  able  to  do  so  by  legislation  or  proclamations,  the  boy¬ 
cotting  of  Jews  should  be  prohibited.  But  I  would  point  out  that  it  is  beyond  the  power  of  any  Gov¬ 
ernment  to  force  its  subjects  to  deal  with  persons  with  whom  they  do  not  wish  to  deal.  The  boycott 
on  various  occasions  by  the  Chinese  of  Japanese  merchants  is  an  instance  in  point. 

At  the  end  of  his  report  Sir  Stuart  Samuel  makes  various  recommendations  with  a  view  to  improve  re- 


20 


lations  between  the  Poles  and  the  Jews,  and  I  venture  to  make  the  following  observations  with  regard  to 
these  recommendations : — 

1.  The  interpretation  of  the  minority  clause,  article  93  of  the  Peace  Treaty,  by  Sir  Stuart  Samuel  is 
justifiable,  and  should  prove  workable  if  the  spirit  in  which  the  Jewish  community  expect  the  Polish  Gov¬ 
ernment  to  interpret  the  clause  in  question  is  also  adopted  by  the  Jewish  community  with  regard  to  the 
Polish  State. 

Recommendations  Nos.  2  to  6  are  certainly  Very  appropriate. 

As  regards  No.  9,  Sir  Stuart  Samuel’s  recommendation  is  to  be  strongly  supported.  I  doubt,  however, 
whether  the  import  of  large  quantities  of  raw  materials  into  Poland  will  improve  the  situation  of  the  Jewish 
population  and  turn  it  into  producers,  as  the  number  of  Jewish  workmen  before  the  war,  when  there  was 
no  scarcity  of  raw  materials,  was  very  limited. 

As  regards  No.  11,  I  would  point  out  that  there  exists  a  national  loan  bank  which  at  the  present  moment 
is  playing  the  part  of  a  State  bank,  and  that  there  is  no  differentiation  between  the  Poles  and  the  Jews 
regarding  the  business  which  can  be  transacted  by  that  bank. 

Polish  legislation,  which  is  practically  the  old  Russian  legislation,  makes  no  difficulties  with  regard  to  the 
founding  of  banks  by  Jews,  so  that  the  latter  are  able,  if  they  need  it,  to  start  banks  in  which  they  can  have 
confidence. 

With  regard  to  the  final  recommendation  pointing  out  the  desirability  of  attaching  a  secretary  who 
understands  and  speaks  Yiddish  to  the  staff  of  His  Majesty’s  Legation.  I  venture  to  observe  that  his 
duties  would  presumably  mainly  consist  in  seeing  that  article  93  of  the  Peace  Treaty  is  applied.  As  the 
minority  clause  was  guaranteed  by  the  League  of  Nations,  it  would  appear  desirable,  if  the  Polish  Govern¬ 
ment  cannot  be  trusted  with  the  application  and  carrying  out  of  that  article,  that  the  League  should  super¬ 
vise  the  execution  of  that  clause,  and  I  would  deprecate  His  Majesty’s  Government  being  alone  identified 
with  this  question,  which  would  be  indirectly  the  case  if  the  appointment  suggested  by  Sir  Stuart  Samuel 
were  made. 

The  two  reports  which  I  transmit  herewith  are,  by  the  instructions  given  to  the  Commission,  limited 
to  Poland,  and  therefore  do  not  discuss  the  conditions  of  the  Jews  outside  that  country.  They  therefore 
unavoidably  give  a  partial  and  consequently  false  picture  of  the  conditions  of  the  Jews  in  Eastern  Europe, 
for,  as  one  of  the  reports  points  out,  their  condition  in  Poland,  bad  as  it  may  have  been  or  may  still  be,  has 
been  far  better  than  in  most  of  the  surrounding  countries.  Unless  all  the  information  on  that  point  is  en¬ 
tirely  inaccurate,  the  massacres  of  Jews  by  Ukrainian  peasant  bands  can  find,  in  their  extent  and  through¬ 
ness,  no  parallel  except  in  the  massacres  of  the  Armenians  in  the  Turkish  Empire.  Their  very  complete¬ 
ness  has  tended  to  keep  the  world  in  ignorance  of  them,  for  towns  of  many  thousand  inhabitants  almost 
wholly  Jewish  have  apparently  been  wiped  out.  Similar  events  have  taken  place  outside  the  Ukraine  proper 
and  all  over  Southern  Russia  during  the  anarchy  of  the  last  three  years,  and  in  countries  on  a  higher  level  of 
culture  than  Southern  Russia,  such  as  Hungary  and  Czecho-Slovakia,  persecutions,  less  sanguinary  per¬ 
haps,  but  very  brutal  and  unjust,  have  also  occurred  in  the  interregnum  which  followed  the  armistice. 
(These  excesses  can  compete  with  any  that  have  occurred  on  Polish  territory.) 

In  all  these  lands  Jews  formerly  sufifered,  but  like  everybody  else  they  suffered  from  the  oppression  of 
autocratic  empires,  all  of  which  have  now  been  destroyed.  The  present-day  hardships  of  the  jews  are  as 
much  as  anything  due  to  the  strong  nationalist  feelings  everywhere  aroused  by  the  Great  War,  and  this 
perhaps  inevitable  conflict  with  national  prejudice  may  prove  even  worse  than  the  former  oppression  by 
absolute  Governments. 

The  statesmen  who  drew  up  the  Treaty  of  Versailles,  recognizing  the  above  fact,  have  imposed  spe¬ 
cial  stipulations  with  a  view  to  protect  Jews  and  other  minorities.  They  have  done  their  best  to  assist  the 
Jews,  but  the  Jewish  congregations  in  Western  Europe  should  also  recognize  this  aggravation  in  the  state 
of  their  Eastern  co-religionists,  and  reflect  how  best  they  can  help  them. 

It  is  giving  the  Jews  very  little  real  assistance  to  single  out,  as  is  sometimes  done,  for  reprobation  and 
protest,  the  country  where  they  have  perhaps  suffered  least.  I  have,  &c. 

H.  RUMBOLD. 


21 


The  Samuel  Report 


ENCLOSURE  NO.  1 
(Report  of  Sir  Stuart  Samuel) 

Sir: 

I  WAS  entrusted  by  His  Majesty’s  Secretary  of 
State  for  Foreign  Affairs  with  a  mission  to  Poland 
on  behalf  of  His  Majesty’s  Government,  the  primary 
object  of  which  was  to  examine  the  specific  charges 
that  have  been  brought  against  the  Poles  of  having 
ill-treated  the  Jewish  population  of  their  country, 
including  any  fresh  cases  of  ill-treatment  that  might 
be  brought  to  my  notice  whilst  my  mission  lasted. 
I  was,  in  particular,  instructed  to  use  my  best  en¬ 
deavours  to  ascertain  in  each  case  where  massacres 
or  outrages  of  Jews  had  taken  place,  where  and  to 
what  extent  the  different  grades  of  Polish  authorities 
were  to  blame  either  for  encouraging  or  culpably 
failing  to  prevent  them,  or  whether  they  had  taken 
all  steps  in  their  power  to  suppress  outbreaks  and 
punish  the  offenders.  The  aim  of  my  mission  was  to 
dissipate  any  misunderstandings  that  might  have 
arisen  and  thus  to  promote  mutual  goodwill  between 
Poland  and  Great  Britain.  I  was,  therefore,  in¬ 
structed  to  make  such  recommendations  to  His 
Majesty’s  Government  as  might  occur  to  me  with 
the  object  of  establishing  greater  harmony  between 
Jewish  and  other  elements  of  the  population  as  a 
satisfactory  solution  of  that  problem  would  obvi¬ 
ously  go  far  to  promote  the  national  prosperity.  The 
mission  left  London  early  in  September  and  re¬ 
mained  in  Poland  about  three  months.  I  took  ex¬ 
cesses  against  the  Jewish  population  which  occurred 
in  Cracow,  Lodz,  Vilna,  Lida,  Pinsk  and  Lemberg  as 
typical,  and  visited  those  places  from  Warsaw. 
Travelling  conditions  in  Poland  at  the  period  of  the 
visits  of  the  mission  presented  such  difficulty,  ow¬ 
ing  to  heavy  falls  of  snow  and  to  the  fact  that  a  large 
number  of  passenger  trains  had  ceased  running  in 
consequence  of  their  accommodation  being  required 
for  the  transport  of  food,  that  the  mission  was  un¬ 
able  to  visit  further  towns. 

My  instructions  directed  my  particular  attention 
to  the  necessity  of  enquiring  into  the  statements  re¬ 
specting  occurrences  of  excesses  or  “pogroms”  in  Po¬ 
land.  In  Poland  a  “pogrom”  is  understood  to  be  an 
excess  against  a  certain  section  of  the  population, 
but  in  England,  owing  to  the  experience  of  previous 
outbreaks  in  Russia,  the  word  “pogrom”  has  be¬ 
come  associated  with  excesses  organized  by  the 
Government  against  a  portion  of  the  population,  or 
when  the  authorities  took  no  steps  to  restrain  those 
perpetrating  the  excesses,  or  intervened  at  a  period 
too  late  to  be  effective  in  preventing  the  loss  of 
human  life.  The  result  of  my  enquiries  brought  me 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  occurrences  at  Lemberg, 


Lida  and  Vilna  come  under  the  head  of  pogroms  in 
the  sense  generally  understood  in  England.  The 
awful  massacre  at  Pinsk  partook  more  of  the  char¬ 
acter  of  a  military  murder.  During  the  outbreaks 
which  took  place  in  the  two  other  towns  a  certain 
number  of  Jews  were  assaulted  and  plundered,  but 
the  military  authorities  endeavoured  to  restrict  the 
action  of  the  soldiers  as  much  as  possible.  Speaking 
generally,  as  the  civil  authority  has  been  able  to 
make  its  power  effective,  so  the  position  in  the  rear 
of  the  troops  has  become  more  and  more  satis¬ 
factory. 

The  Polish  Government  has  been  confronted  with 
the  problem  of  maintaining  order  in  those  portions 
of  the  German,  Russian  and  Austrian  Empires  which 
have  been  incorporated  within  the  present  Republic 
of  Poland.  The  establishment  of  order  was  en¬ 
trusted  to  a  semi-military  force  known  as  the  field 
gendarmerie,  corresponding  somewhat  to  a  military 
police  force.  This  body  was  recruited  from  a  not 
very  desirable  class,  and  is  practically  independent 
of  any  but  the  highest  civil  authority.  The  gen¬ 
darmerie  has  almost  unlimited  powers,  and  is  in  the 
habit  of  entering  the  houses,  chiefly  of  the  Jews,  at 
any  time  of  the  day  or  night  upon  the  pretext  of 
searching  for  arms,  and  robs  and  beats  the  Jews. 
This  is  done  quite  openly,  and  the  Jews  may  be  said 
to  have  no  means  of  redress.  Proceedings,  when 
taken,  are  allowed  to  drift  for  an  interminable  period, 
and  usually  result  in  the  implicated  men  being  re¬ 
leased.  There  is  thus  really  no  security  for  the 
Jewish  population.  Besides  the  gendarmerie  there  is 
a  police  force,  but  the  remarks  applied  to  the  former 
can  be  taken  as  on  the  whole  true  with  regard  to 
the  latter  also.  The  Polish  Government  recognises 
the  inadequacy  of  this  body,  and,  I  understand,  is 
taking  steps  to  reorganise  it. 

In  addition,  the  junior  authorities  of  justice  and 
of  civil  administration  also  are  of  inferior  standing 
and  morale,  taking  advantage  of  their  position  not 
only  to  persecute  the  Jews,  but  also  to  exact  bribes 
upon  an  astonishing  scale. 

The  foregoing  remarks  apply  in  a  less  degree  to 
Galicia,  which  has  been  brought  under  the  adminis¬ 
tration  of  the  Polish  Government  during  the  past 
year.  Many  former  Austrian  officials  have  been  re¬ 
tained,  who,  having  been  trained  under  the  Austrian 
Empire,  maintain  certain  traditions  which  make  for 
a  better  condition  of  law  and  order.  These  remarks 
equally  apply  to  the  districts  of  German  Poland,  but 
in  the  remaining  portion  of  Poland  the  officials  being 
new  and  inexperienced  the  deplorable  result  I  have 
mentioned  has  ensued.  The  higher  officials  both  of 
the  Government  and  of  Justice,  in  my  opinion,  are 
not  subject  to  these  unfortunate  failings,  and  when- 


22 


ever  it  is  possible  to  obtain  the  attention  of  these 
authorities  a  rough  form  of  justice  is  achieved. 

The  contention  of  the  Polish  Government,  that  it 
was  not  strong  enough  to  keep  pogroms  under  con¬ 
trol  in  the  past,  may  perhaps  have  some  cogency, 
but  I  should  like  to  draw  attention  to  the  fact  that, 
with  the  exception  of  events  at  Minsk,  no  pogroms 
have  occurred  during  the  stay  of  either  the  Ameri¬ 
can  Mission  or  the  British  Mission  to  Poland.  It 
would,  therefore,  appear  reasonable  to  deduce  that  if 
the  Government  is  sufficiently  strong  to  restrain 
wrongdoers  for  this  period,  namely,  about  five- 
months,  it  should  be  competent  to  do  so  in  future. 

The  Jews  in  Poland  and  Galicia  number  about 
three  millions.  As  in  other  countries  the  large  ma¬ 
jority  of  them  is  very  poor,  suffering  severely  from 
hunger  and  privation.  Want  of  employment  is 
prevalent,  although  a  large  proportion  of  them  are 
artisans  and  labourers.  They  are  divided  broadly 
into  three  classes,  namely : — 

1.  What  are  known  as  the  Assimilators ; 

2.  The  Zionists  ;  and 

3.  The  Orthodox; 

though  doubtless  there  are  many  Orthodox  among 
the  Zionists.  They  speak  a  jargon  known  as 
“Yiddish,”  which  is  to  be  found  wherever  Jews 
congregate,  but  of  recent  years  there  is  a  tendency 
to  employ  Hebrew  as  a  living  language,  though  it  is 
seldom  used  as  the  colloquial  language  of  the  home 
circle.  The  fact  of  their  language  being  akin  to  Ger¬ 
man  often  led  to  their  being  employed  during  the 
German  occupation  in  preference  to  other  Poles. 
This  circumstance  caused  the  Jews  to  be  accused 
of  having  had  business  relations  with  the  Germans. 
Almost  as  soon  as  the  Polish  Government  was  es¬ 
tablished,  ill-feeling  became  manifest  against  the 
Jews.  Public  opinion  had  been  aroused  against 
them  by  the  institution  of  a  virulent  boycott.  This 
boycott  dates  from  shortly  after  the  bye-election  for 
the  Duma,  which  took  place  in  Warsaw  in  1912. 
Amongst  the  candidates  was  M.  Dmowski,  one  of 
the  leaders  of  the  National  Democratic  Party. 
When  the  names  of  the  electors  came  to  be  scruti¬ 
nised,  it  was  found  that  the  Jewish  electors  pos¬ 
sessed  the  controlling  influence  in  the  election.  They 
considered,  however,  that  the  capital  of  Poland 
should  not  be  represented  by  a  member  of  a  minority 
in  the  country,  and  therefore  did  not  present  a  Jewish 
candidate,  but  patriotically  offered  to  support  any 
candidate  who  would  abstain  from  an  anti-Semitic 
policy.  The  only  candidate  willing  to  accede  to  this 
condition  was  M.  Jagiello,  a  Roman  Catholic  Pole, 
who  was  accordingly  returned.1  M.  Dmowski,  who 
was  defeated  at  the  poll,  thereupon  set  out  on  a 
campaign  to  break  the  Jewish  influence,  and  from 
that  time  to  this  has  pursued  a  policy  with  the  object 
of  driving  the  Jews  from  Poland,  a  step  which 
can  only  be  fraught  with  disaster  to  the  country. 
During  the  war,  owing  to  the  scarcity  of  almost 
everything,  the  boycott  diminished,  but  with  the 
armistice  it  revived  with  much  of  its  original  in¬ 
tensity.  A  charge  has  been  made  against  the  Gov¬ 


ernment  of  participation  in  this  boycott.  The  Gov¬ 
ernment  publicly  declared  its  disapproval  of  boycot¬ 
ting,  but  a  certain  discrimination  seems  to  have  been 
made  in  the  re-employment  of  those  who  served  under 
the  German  occupation.  I  find  that  many  Jews  who 
thus  served  have  been  relieved  of  their  offices  and 
not  reinstated,  whereas  I  can  find  no  evidence  of 
similar  procedure  in  regard  to  other  Poles.  Jewish 
doctors  are  unable  to  obtain  positions  in  the  hos¬ 
pitals.  Other  qualified  Jews  cannot  secure  appoint¬ 
ments  as  Post  Office  officials,  on  the  railway  staff 
or  as  teachers  in  the  public  schools  and  colleges, 
with  the  exception  of  Professor  Askenazy,  recently 
appointed  to  a  chair  in  the  University  of  Warsaw. 
There  is  also  a  limitation  of  the  number  of  students 
professing  the  Jewish  religion  permitted  to  enter 
certain  Universities.  With  the  exception  of  doctors 
and  a  few  officials  in  the  administrative  offices,  there 
are  few  officers  in  the  army.  That  this  is  merely  a 
matter  of  religious  prejudice  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  all  these  posts  are  open  to  those  Jews  who  are 
willing  to  change  their  religion. 

In  time  of  scarcity  essential  articles  of  food,  such 
as  bread,  potatoes  and  sugar,  are  distributed  to  the 
population  by  minor  officials.  I  received  many  com¬ 
plaints  that  the  Christian  population  were  supplied 
first,  and  that  in  numerous  cases  the  stock  was  ex¬ 
hausted  before  all  the  Jews  had  received  their  share. 
The  complaint  that  Jews  and  Christians  were  divided 
into  separate  queues,  and  also  that  the  Jews  were  dis¬ 
criminated  against  to  their  disadvantage  in  the  mar¬ 
kets,  could  not  be  substantiated. 

Without  doubt  a  systematic  attempt,  more  espe¬ 
cially  by  provincial  authorities,  is  being  made  to 
oust  Jews  from  their  trades,  and  it  is  only  where 
these  authorities  are  as  a  result  confronted  by  pecu¬ 
lation  and  incompetency  that  they  realise  the  futility 
of  their  action.  The  Government  itself  is  not  with¬ 
out  some  experience  of  this  kind.  I  had  my  atten¬ 
tion  drawn  to  cases  of  discrimination  against  Jews 
dealing  in  hides,  petroleum,  salt,  bread  and  other 
articles,  which,  in  my  opinion,  could  only  have  been 
based  upon  religious  prejudice.  I  do  not  find,  how¬ 
ever,  any  ground  for  the  complaint  that  the  Govern¬ 
ment  is  putting  Jewish  merchants  at  a  disadvantage 
in  comparison  with  non-Jews  with  regard  to  per¬ 
mission  to  import  goods  from  abroad.  In  fact,  the 
club  of  Jewish  merchants  at  Warsaw,  consisting  of 
several  thousand  members,  assured  me  that  the  ar¬ 
rangements  made  were  quite  satisfactory.  I  have 
also  received  facts  and  figures  from  M.  Szczeniow- 
ski,  Minister  of  Commerce,  fully  bearing  out  this 
point. 

A  severe  private,  social  and  commercial  boycott 
of  Jews,  however,  exists  amongst  the  people  gen¬ 
erally,  largely  fostered  by  the  Polish  press.  In 
Lemberg  I  found  that  there  was  a  so-called  social 
court  presided  over  by  M.  Przyluski,  a  former  Aus¬ 
trian  vice-president  of  the  Court  of  Appeal,  which 
goes  so  far  as  to  summon  persons  having  trade  rela¬ 
tions  with  Jews  to  give  an  explanation  of  their  con¬ 
duct.  Below  will  be  found  a  copy  of  a  typical  cutting 
from  a  Polish  newspaper  giving  the  name  of  a  Polish 
countess  who  sold  property  to  Jews.  This  was  sur- 


23 


rounded  by  a  mourning  border,  such  as  is  usual  in 
Poland  in  making  announcements  of  death : — 

“Malopolska  hrabina 
“Anna  Jablonowska 

“sprzedala  we  wrzesniu  b.r.  swoje  dwie  kamienice 
przy  up.  Stryjskiej  1.  18  i  20  zydom :  Dogilewskiemu, 
Hubnerowi  i  Erbsenowi. 

“Zastepa  prawnym  pani  hrabiny  byl  adwokat  Dr. 
Dziedzic,  administratorem  p.  Naszkowski. 

“Czv  spoleczenstwo  polskie  bedzie  wciaz  martwe 
i  bierne  w  takich  wypadkach?” 

(Translation.) 

“Countess  Anna  Jablonowska,  resident  in  Galicia, 
has  sold  her  two  houses,  Stryjska  Street,  Nos.  18 
and  20,  to  the  Jews,  Dogilewski,  Hiibner  and 
Erbsen. 

“The  attorney  of  the  Countess  was  Dr.  Dziedzic; 
her  administrator,  M.  Naszkowski. 

“Will  the  Polish  public  for  ever  remain  indifferent 
and  passive  in  such  cases?” 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Government  could 
greatly  restrain  the  virulency  of  this  movement  if 
the  powers  usually  resident  in  a  Government  were 
efectually  used  to  prohibit  such  agitation.  Although 
the  Government  declares  against  boycotting,  the 
Polish  press  is  allowed  openly  to  advocate  it,  whilst 
the  Yiddish  press  is  suspended  for  quite  trivial 
offences.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  the  ill-results 
of  boycotting  cannot  be  limited  to  the  class 
aimed  at,  for  this  weapon  has  a  tendency  to  affect 
others,  and  eventually  to  react  upon  those  who  make 
use  of  it.  The  idea  widely  prevails  that  the  so- 
called  Litvaks,  Russian  Jews  driven  to  Poland  by 
the  former  Russian  Government,  should  be  induced 
to  return,  and  I  am  of  opinion  that,  should  a  suitable 
Government  and  peaceful  conditions  be  re-estab¬ 
lished  in  Russia,  there  would  be  a  general  immigra¬ 
tion  to  that  country,  not  only  of  Jews,  but  also  of 
other  Poles.  The  ardent  hope  was  frequently  ex¬ 
pressed  to  me  that  Russia  would  soon  be  open  for 
immigration,  for,  although  the  late  Russian  Govern¬ 
ment  fomented  pogroms  and  massacres  of  the  Jews, 
the  Russian  himself  is  of  a  kindly  nature  and  friend¬ 
ly  disposed  to  his  neighbour.  Business  relations  be¬ 
tween  Poland  and  Russia  were  very  considerable  in 
past,  and  were  generally  in  the  hands  of  Jews,2 
not  only  in  the  handling  of  the  goods  exported,  but 
also  of  their  manufacture.  Warsaw,  the  Polish 
capital,  formed  a  meeting-place  for  the  merchants 
of  Russia  and  the  western  States,  and  was  also  a 
depot  for  goods  eventually  destined  for  Russia.  All 
these  trading  agencies  are  now  at  a  standstill,  and 
Poland  is  feeling  the  economic  result  of  this  stop¬ 
page.  Other  inducements  for  an  industrial  popula¬ 
tion,  subjected  to  a  boycott,  to  leave  the  country  are 
to  be  found  in  the  absence  of  raw  materials  and  in 
the  scarcity  of  food  and  fuel,  as  well  as  in  the  hard¬ 
ships  consequent  upon  rising  prices  arising  from 
the  unfavourable  conditions  of  foreign  exchange. 

Initiative  in  business  matters  is  almost  entirely 
the  prerogative  of  the  Jewish  population.  In  Lodz 
the  cotton  industry  and  the  development  of  the 


town  has  been  effected  mostly  through  the  instru¬ 
mentality  of  the  Jews.  Manufactures  and  business 
generally  have,  owing  to  the  circumstances  prevail¬ 
ing  before  and  during  the  war,  fallen  largely  into 
the  hands  of  Jews.3  It  is  impossible  to  replace 
such  a  valuable  section  of  the  community  by  a  fresh 
body  of  merchants  untrained  and  unaccustomed  to 
handle  the  important  mercantile  interests  which 
should,  in  view  of  the  advantages  accruing  to  Po¬ 
land  under  the  Peace  Treaty,  largely  increase  in  the 
near  future. 

The  fallacious  idea,  however,  is  prevalent  in  Pol¬ 
and  that  it  is  possible  to  transfer  a  large  percentage 
of  the  business  carried  on  by  the  Jews  to  other  hands. 
If  a  Jewish  Pole  is 'driven  from  his  factory  or  bus¬ 
iness  the  act  does  not  provide  more  work  for  the 
Christian  Pole,  but  diminishes  it.  When  the  ques¬ 
tion  of  external  trade  comes  to  be  considered  it  is 
impossible  to  displace  without  grave  results  firms 
who  have  built  up  a  business  over  a  long  series  of 
years,  who  are  acquainted  with,  and  know  the  re¬ 
quirements  of,  their  customers  in  remote  countries 
and  have  gradually  acquired  confidence  and  credit. 
No  new  combination,  whether  Jewish  or  Christian, 
could  conduct  such  a  business  successfully  except 
after  long  experience.  Moreover,  I  found  it  to  be 
a  fact  that  the  Jewish  Pole  commands  greater  trust 
than  his  neighbours.  To  such  an  extent  is  this  the 
case  in  Poland  that  nearly  the  whole  of  the  estate 
agents  who  act  for  the  Polish  nobility  are  of  Jewish 
race.  The  real  interest  of  the  Polish  State  would 
seem  to  be  rather  in  the  direction  of  developing  and 
encouraging  the  export  business  hitherto  carried  on 
by  Jews;  in  this  way  lies  almost  the  sole  hope  of 
the  economic  regeneration  of  Poland  and  of  the  re¬ 
habilitation  of  its  depreciated  currency.  In  this  con¬ 
nection  it  should  be  remembered  that  depreciation 
of  currency  as  expressed  in  terms  of  external  values 
does  not  arise  solely  from  an  adverse  trade  balance, 
but  that  a  normal  rate  of  exchange  demonstrates 
also  the  healthy  functioning  of  stable  Government 
and  the  consequent  safety  of  life  and  property. 

Polish  statesmen  frequently  assert  that  the  pro¬ 
portion  of  Jewish  small  tradesmen  to  the  general 
population  is  too  great.  If  the  complaint  were  lim¬ 
ited  to  this  alone  it  might  safely  be  left  to  find  its 
own  remedy,  for  I  found  that  the  children  of  this 
class  were  not  satisfied  to  follow  the  parents’  voca¬ 
tion  but  were  endeavouring,  by  means  of  attending 
technical  and  other  schools,  to  attain  a  higher 
educational  and  social  level.  This  class,  however, 
little  above  the  pauper,  ever  finds  itself  driven  back 
upon  itself  by  the  economic  restraints  which  it  en¬ 
counters  until  at  last,  in  desperation,  it  is  forced  to 
emigrate.  I  found  but  few  families  that  had  not 
one  member  at  least  in  America  or  Canada.  Ex¬ 
perience  has  shown,  as  in  the  case  of  Ireland,  that 
it  is  always  a  disadvantage  to  a  country  to  have  an 
emigration  of  despairing  people,  as  these  sow  the 
seed  of  their  discontent  in  other  lands.  A  further 
remedy  for  this  congestion  of  occupation  would  be 
to  introduce  into  Poland  new  industries,  for  which 
Jews  in  other  countries  have  evinced  special  apti¬ 
tude.  The  difficulty  of  securing  raw  material  limits 


24 


the  occupations  available  at  the  present  time,  but 
it  would  appear  quite  feasible  to  start  factories  for 
the  manufacture  of  waterproofing,  galoshes,  furni¬ 
ture,  boots,  and  clothing.  Doubtless  western  Jews 
would  be  prepared  to  assist  their  brethren  to  reach 
a  higher  plane  of  industrial  development,  but  un¬ 
fortunately  the  Christian  Poles,  although  not  under¬ 
taking  such  enterprises  to  any  extent  themselves, 
exhibited  distinct  hostility  to  any  such  suggestion 
which  would  benefit  both  the  Jews  and  the  State 
alike.  Many  Poles,  however,  enlarge  the  demand 
for  a  reduction  of  the  number  of  small  Jewish  trades¬ 
men  to  one  for  the  reduction  of  the  Jewish  popula¬ 
tion  as  a  whole.  This  proposition  is  fraught  with  a 
danger  not  confined  to  the  Jews;  it  is  a  danger  to 
the  State.  To  render  the  conditions  of  life  so  in¬ 
tolerable  to  the  Jew  as  to  force  him  to  leave  his 
native  country,  has  ever  been  followed  by  disastrous 
consequences  to  the  country,  where  this  form  of 
persecution  has  been  essayed ;  whereas  in  every 
country,  where  the  Jew  has  been  granted  an  effec- 
tic  citizenship,  he  has  proved  himself  a  mainstay 
of  law  and  order.  The  Jew  has  usually  so  much  to 
lose  through  the  consequences  of  disorder  that  he 
ranges  himself  instinctively  on  the  side  of  good 
government.  It  is  for  the  Poles  to  choose  whether 
they  will  follow  the  example  of  Great  Britain,  the 
United  States  of  America,  France,  Holland,  Italy 
and  the  other  liberal-minded  States  which  have 
treated  the  Jew  equitably,  or  link  their  fate  with 
ancient  Egypt,  mediaeval  Spain  and  modern  Russia. 
It  must  further  be  considered  that  when  the  Jew 
is  driven  out,  his  capital  is  driven  out  with  him.  In 
fact,  in  most  cases  it  precedes  him,  for  the  poor  and 
helpless  Jew  is  not  the  first  to  leave  in  face  of  eco¬ 
nomic  persecution  such  as  a  boycott  or  the  fear 
of  personal  safety,  but  rather  he  who  possesses  the 
means  to  seek  happier  conditions  of  livelihood  else¬ 
where.  Thus,  at  the  very  time  when  it  is  vital  to 
the  interest  of  Poland  to  import  capital,  were  the 
suggested  policy  carried  into  action,  it  would  have 
for  its  result  the  export  of  capital.  In  addition, 
there  is  the  danger  that  the  better  minds  amongst 
non-Jews  would  not  be  willing  to  remain  in  a  coun¬ 
try  wherein  truth  and  justice  are  absent. 

Another  policy  appears  to  have  as  its  object  the 
identification  of  Jews  as  Bolsheviks  in  order  to  dis¬ 
tract  public  attention  from  the  Government.  The 
real  danger  of  Bolshevism,  however,  is  to  be  sought 
in  other  directions,  although  it  should  not  be  mat¬ 
ter  for  surprise  if  some  of  the  younger  generation 
of  educated  Jews,  finding  all  avenues  of  advance¬ 
ment  and  fair  play  barred,  should  be  found  ready 
to  listen  to  proposals  for  freedom  and  equality  of 
opportunity.  It  is  a  fair  retort  that  the  Govern¬ 
ment  policy  is  making  potential  revolutionaries  of 
these  peoples.  If  the  Polish  Government  would 
grant  the  Jews  a  genuine,  and  not  a  masked,  equal¬ 
ity,  they  would  secure  the  support  of  the  most 
conservative  law-abiding  and  loyaj  section  of  the 
population.  All  the  Jews  ask  is  to  be  allowed  to 
live  in  peace  and  safety.  By  grinding  them  down 
by  economic  differentiation  a  certain  number  of 
these  people  may  be  induced  to  emigrate,  but  the 


danger  will  always  remain  that  a  certain  residuum 
will  be  forced  into  the  ranks  of  the  disaffected  and 
disloyal.  The  Jew  may  be  robbed,  plundered,  have 
his  beard  cut  and  be  otherwise  insulted  for  a  time, 
but  who  can  be  surprised  if  a  point  be  reached 
when  men  will  not  tolerate  such  treatment  longer 
and  will  be  prepared  to  make,  the  utmost  sacrifices 
to  achieve  the  honour  of  their  manhood? 

Under  this  hard  and  continued  pressure  many 
Jews  have  been  constrained  to  change  their  reli¬ 
gion,  and  it  is  mostly  these  “Jews”  who  are  meant 
when  “Jews”  are  mentioned  as  being  in  Government 
employ. 

I  made  careful  enquiries  in  various  parts  of  Po¬ 
land  as  to  the  extent  to  which  Bolshevik  principles 
had  permeated  the  Jewish  population,  and  the  high¬ 
est  estimate  which  I  encountered  was  10  per  cent, 
of  their  number,  a  considerably  less  proportion, 
according  to  my  informants,  than  characterises  the 
population  as  a  whole.  In  investigating  the  truth 
of  the  statement  that  Jews  in  Poland  sympathise 
with  Bolshevism,  attention  must  be  paid  to  the 
fact  that  Jews  form  the  middle  class  almost  in  its 
entirety.4  Above  are  the  aristocracy  and  below  are 
the  peasants.  Their  relations  with  the  peasants 
are  not  unsatisfactory.  The  young  peasants  can¬ 
not  read  the  newspapers  and  are  therefore  but 
slightly  contaminated  by  anti-Semitism  until  they 
enter  the  army.  I  was  informed  that  it  is  not  at 
all  unusual  for  Polish  peasants  to  avail  themselves 
of  the  arbitrament  of  the  Jewish  rabbi’s  courts. 
Another  point  to  be  borne  in  mind  is  that  a  very 
considerable  proportion  of  the  Jews  belong  to  the 
orthodox  form  of  the  religion.  If  I  understand 
aright,  Bolshevism  stands  against  both  religion  and 
the  bourgeoisie ;  it  must  therefore  be  clear  from 
the  above  statements  that  by  the  acceptance  of  these 
tenets  most  of  the  Polish  Jews  would  but  compass 
their  own  destruction. 

In  conclusion,  I  desire  to  point  out  that,  if  the 
social  boycott  were  successful  in  securing  a  large 
emigration  of  Jews,  it  would  result  in  a  very  large 
decrease  in  the  productive  powers  of  Poland.  As 
the  future  of  the  republic  depends  largely  upon  its 
exports  exceeding  its  imports  the  future  of  the 
State  itself  might  be  imperilled.  The  Polish  Gov¬ 
ernment  would  be  well  advised  in  its  own  interests 
that  to  take  immediate  and  active  measures  to  bring 
this  unsatisfactory  condition  of  affairs  to  a  speedy 
end  would  be  acting  in  the  best  interests  of  the 
people  committed  to  its  charge. 

I  now  propose  to  report  upon  the  result  of  my 
investigations  into  the  excesses  perpetrated  in  the 
towns  I  visited  in  the  order  they  occurred.  Before 
doing  so  I  would  like  to  remark  that  as  statements 
that  the  Jews  were  enemies  of  the  rest  of  the  popu¬ 
lation,  and  that  all  misfortunes  were  to  be  ascribed 
to  their  influence,  were  constantly  circulated,  and 
the  Jews  formed  an  easy  prey  for  robbery  and 
plunder,  attacks  upon  them  were  to  be  expected. 
It  was,  however,  the  evil  example  of  the  military  as 
they  entered  captured  towns  which  as  a  rule  incited 
the  civil  population  to  join  in  the  pogroms.  If  the 
military  commanders  had  but  performed  their  duty 


25 


to  humanity  and  their  office,  the  loss  of  life  would 
have  been  considerably  less.  Poland,  too,  would 
not  be  burdened  with  these  still  unpunished  crimes. 

Lemberg—  With  regard  to  the  events  in  Lemberg 
on  the  21st,  22nd  and  23rd  November,  1918,  con¬ 
sideration  has  to  be  given  to  the  very  remarkable  po¬ 
sition  that  was  to  be  found  in  that  city  at  that 
period,  and  it  is  noteworthy  upon  what  a  small  scale 
were  the  operations.  Previous  to  the  date  mentioned 
the  Ukrainian  army  consisted  of  about  10,000  men 
in  occupation  of  that  portion  of  East  Galicia,  but 
General  Monczynski  raised  a  Polish  army,  about 
1,500  in  number,  consisting  of  men,  women,  boys, 
some  of  them  criminals,  and,  after  a  severe  struggle, 
succeeded  in  capturing  half  the  city,  the  other  half 
of  which  remained  in  the  occupation  erf  the  Ukrain¬ 
ians.  The  Jewish  part  of  the  population  of  Lem¬ 
berg  declared  itself  to  be  neutral.  After  street  fight¬ 
ing  of  a  severe  character  the  Polish  forces  succeeded 
in  driving  the  Ukrainians  entirely  out  of  the  city. 
This  result  was  achieved  through  the  advent  of  a 
considerable  body  of  Polish  troops  brought  under 
General  Roja  from  Posen.  It  has  been  proved  to 
my  satisfaction  that  these  troops  were  promised 
three  days  free  looting  of  the  Jewish  quarter,  and  I 
had  it  in  evidence  that  Jews  were  warned  by  Chris¬ 
tian  friends  of  the  certainty  of  a  pogrom  on  the 
days  mentioned.  The  Polish  soldiers  and  popula¬ 
tion  were  somewhat  incensed  by  the  attitude  of  the 
Jews  in  not  having  assisted  them  in  their  struggle, 
but  nothing  can  excuse  the  work  of  robbery  and 
murder  which  took  place  on  the  days  mentioned 
(21st,  22nd  and  23rd  November). 

Helena  Schine  deposed  that  a  body  of  soldiers 
came  to  her  house,  shot  her  father,  her  brother  and 
her  brother-in-law,  and  would  have  shot  her,  but 
she  gave  them  3,000  crowns  and  they  went  away. 
The  soldiers  came  again  at  about  12  o’clock  in  the 
day  and  shot  her  brother,  who  was  still  living, 
though  previously  wounded,  dead.  They  broke 
open  the  safe  and  stole  the  silver  plate.  Another 
body  of  soldiers  came  to  the  house  about  5  o’clock. 
She  had  by  then  taken  refuge  on  the  third  floor  with 
a  Polish  woman,  who  when  the  soldiers  came  the 
third  time  sent  them  away. 

Various  other  witnesses  deposed  that  many  build¬ 
ings  were  set  on  fire  with  petroleum  obtained  from 
a  store ;  as  the  occupants  ran  out  to  escape  the 
flames,  they  were  shot  down  in  the  street  in  cold 
blood  by  Polish  soldiers.  The  synagogue  was 
burned,  the  safe  being  opened  by  means  of  machine- 
gun  fire,  and  the  scrolls  of  the  law  were  burned 
and  everything  of  value  removed.  The  result  of 
the  three  days’  looting  was  that  fifty-two  Jews  were 
killed,  463  wounded,  and  a  large  amount  of  property 
stolen. 

It  should  be  stated  that  proceedings  were  taken 
against  General  Roja,  who  was  in  command  of 
the  Posen  troops,  but  he  was  declared  to  be  suffer¬ 
ing  from  a  nervous  breakdown. 

The  Poles  alleged  that  the  Jews,  whilst  calling 
themselves  neutrals,  had  shown  active  sympathy 


with  the  Ukrainians,  but  the  evidence  given  did  not, 
in  my  opinion,  support  that  contention. 

The  charge  brought  against  the  Jewish  militia — 
a  body  consisting  of  200  men  of  Jewish  race  en¬ 
rolled  to  defend  and  keep  order  in  the  Jewish  quar¬ 
ter — of  having  fired  at  the  Polish  troops  has  been 
recently  the  subject  of  proceedings  in  the  Polish 
Courts ;  the  charge  was  dismissed. 

In  the  result  none  of  the  military  commanders 
responsible  for  these  events  has  been  punished,  and 
no  compensation  has  been  paid  for  the  damage  done. 

Pinsk. — The  events  at  Pinsk  on  the  5th  April, 
1919,  when  thirty-five  Jews  were  shot,  took  place 
about  ten  days  after  the  town  had  been  taken  from 
the  Bolsheviks  by  the  Polish  army.  The  Polish 
command  had,  a  day  or  two  before,  suffered  a  re¬ 
verse  at  the  hands  of  the  Bolsheviks  and  were  in 
a  state  of  nervousness  as  to  an  attack  on  the  town. 
It  seems  that  two  Polish  soldiers,  one  named  Kosak, 
who  is  now  in  prison  for  robbery,  and  another  sol¬ 
dier,  since  reported  as  killed  in  action,  informed  the 
military  authorities  that  they  had  information  that 
the  Jews  intended  to  hold  a  Bolshevik  meeting  on 
Saturday  in  what  is  known  as  the  People’s  House, 
being  the  headquarters  of  the  Zionists. 

The  events  that  followed  appear  to  be  so  incred¬ 
ible  that  I  think  it  best  to  give  the  evidence  of  the 
witnesses.  Abraham  Feinstein,  president  of  the 
Zionist  Co-operative  Society,  deposed  that  about 
the  28th  March  he  received  a  letter  from  the  Govern¬ 
ment  Organiser  of  Co-operative  Societies,  M.  Tro- 
fimowicz  (a  non-Jew),  stating  that  it  was  desirable 
that  all  co-operative  societies  in  the  town  should 
combine,  and  giving  them  up  to  the  7th  April  to 
make  their  decisoin.  He  enclosed  the  Government 
permission  for  the  meeting  to  take  place.  Notices 
were  posted  in  the  streets  and  in  the  large  syna¬ 
gogues.  The  meeting  took  place  on  Saturday,  the 
5th  April,  and  there  were  about  150  persons  present, 
consisting  of  men  and  women.  The  meeting  com¬ 
menced  at  5.  M.  Eisenberg  was  in  the  chair.  M. 
Trofimowicz  was  present  at  the  opening  of  the 
meeting  and  explained  its  purpose  and  left  at  5  :30. 
It  was  decided  unanimously  to  combine.  A  discus¬ 
sion  then  took  place  as  to  how  many  delegates  were 
to  be  sent  to  the  combination.  That  matter  was 
adjourned,  and  most  of  the  co-operators  went  home. 
Mr.  Zukerman,  an  American,  had  brought  50,000 
marks  to  be  distributed  for  the  holy  days.  Many  of 
those  present  went  into  another  room  to  discuss 
this,  and  how  the  money  was  to  be  distributed. 
Whilst  this  was  going  on  some  boys  came  in  and 
said  soldiers  were  there  to  take  Jews  for  forced 
labour.  They  all  went  into  the  large  hall.  Soldiers 
were  shouting  and  others  were  stealing  food  from 
the  refreshment  room.  The  house  consisted  of  two 
floors — shops  on  the  ground  floor  and  the  club  on 
the  first  floor.  Feinstein  went  into  a  friend’s  shop 
on  the  ground  floor  to  take  shelter,  and  later  found 
the  whole  building  surrounded  by  soldiers,  including 
Kosak.  Kosak  stopped  people  and  took  bribes  from 
them  not  to  take  them  for  forced  labour.  Feinstein 
then  hid  in  Gottleib’s  store  on  the  ground  floor,  but 


26 


was  discovered  and  a  soldier  was  left  to  guard  him. 
He  heard  a  shot  upstairs.  Gottleib  went  out  to 
get  some  water,  and  came  back  and  said  a  dead  man 
was  lying  in  the  yard.  At  10  an  under-officer  came 
and  said  that  about  fifty  arrested  people  had  been 
shot  dead  and  that  his  turn  would  come  at  5  o’clock 
the  next  morning.  At  1 :30  A.  M.  an  under-officer 
and  two  soldiers  came  and  sent  the  guarding  soldier 
away.  They  robbed  him  and  said :  “You  must  go  to 
the  Kommandatur,  and  you  will  be  shot,  as  all  the 
meeting  were  Bolsheviks.”  One  soldier,  a  Polish 
under-officer,  said  he  could  speak  Yiddish,  and  that 
he  was  in  the  synagogue  and  heard  the  Jews  arrange 
to  act  against  the  Poles,  and  that  he  heard  a  young 
man  say:  “We  will  have  a  meeting  in  the  People’s 
House  at  5.”  Feinstein  stated  it  was  untrue,  then 
the  soldier  said  he  would  take  150  roubles  to  let 
them  go,  there  being  six  of  them  in  Gottlieb’s  room, 
and  eventually  he  consented  to  take  50  roubles.  He 
then  found  two  pocket-books  and  took  500  roubles 
and  600  roubles  respectively  from  them.  He  then 
said:  “You  are  free.”  He  accompanied  Feinstein 
along  the  street  and  he  arrived  home  at  4  A.  M. 

Saloman  Gittelman,  a  teacher,  deposed  that  he 
was  arrested  at  the  People’s  House  at  about  5 
o’clock.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Co-operative 
Society  and  attended  the  meeting.  He  heard  a  shot. 
Soldiers  then  came  in  and  said,  “Why  have  you  shot 
at  us?”  and  ordered  all  to  stand  with  hands  up. 
They  were  all  searched  and  beaten.  No  arms  were 
found.  The  soldiers  ordered  all  out,  surrounded 
them,  and  took  them  to  the  Kommandatur.  They 
were  severely  beaten  on  the  way.  An  army  doctor 
named  Bakraba  stopped  them  on  the  way  and  en¬ 
quired  what  it  all  meant,  and  the  soldiers  replied 
that  the  Jews  had  shot  at  soldiers.  A  soldier  stepped 
up  and  said  that  they  had  shot  at  him  and  wounded 
him  in  the  head.  The  doctor  replied,  “All  these  Jews 
ought  to  be  shot.”  They  arrived  at  the  Komman¬ 
datur,  were  stood  out  in  the  street,  and  were  all 
robbed.  There  were  several  officers  present.  There 
was  no  trial.  Soldiers  came  back  from  the  Kom¬ 
mandatur  and  they  were  taken  to  the  market-place. 
They  murdered  about  sixty.  Each  was  placed 
against  the  wall.  It  was  extremely  dark,  and  sol¬ 
diers  came  with  a  motor  bearing  a  searchlight.  An 
officer  came  and  looked  into  everyone’s  face,  and 
some  were  removed,  including  the  women.  The 
remainder  were  then  informed  that  their  last  mo¬ 
ment  had  come,  and  they  could  say  their  prayers. 
They  then,  with  the  lead  of  the  teacher,  uttered  in 
a  loud  voice  their  last  prayers  for  the  dying  (I  may 
mention  that  these  so-called  Bolsheviks,  who  pro¬ 
fess  a  negation  of  religion,  uttered  their  last  prayers 
in  such  a  loud  voice  that  they  could  be  heard  right 
across  the  market-place).  The  officer  then  com¬ 
manded  the  soldiers  to  shoot.  The  figures  against 
the  wall  fell,  after  which  the  soldiers  came  and  shot 
those  who  moved  on  the  ground.  The  remainder, 
who  had  been  put  on  one  side,  were  then  taken  to 
prison  at  10  o’clock.  There  had  been  no  trial  and 
no  word  whatever  said  to  them  previous  to  the 
shooting.  Nothing  to  eat  was  given.  Seventeen 
men  were  placed  in  one  room,  and  at  11:30  three 


men  were  brought  in.  They  said  that  the  man 
Glauberman  had  been  shot,  but  not  at  the  wall.  I 
have  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  the  shot  heard 
by  those  in  the  club  was  one  fired  at  random  by  a 
soldier  outside  to  give  colour  to  the  charge  that  the 
soldiers  had  been  fired  upon,  and  unfortunately  it 
killed  Glauberman,  who  was  hiding  in  a  shed  under¬ 
neath  the  stairs  leading  up  to  the  club.  I  was 
shown  the  hole  made  by  the  bullet.  No  arms  were 
found  in  the  possession  of  these  alleged  Bolsheviks. 

Next  morning  an  under-officer  came  and  took 
their  names,  and  said :  “We  will  show  you  what  has 
become  of  your  friends.”  Nineteen  of  them  were 
taken  to  the  cemetery  by  a  gendarme  and  some  c,~1 
diers.  They  were  shown  a  freshly  filled-in  grave. 
They  were  given  shovels  and  told  to  reopen  the 
grave.  This  done,  they  were  placed  together  in  a 
row.  Soldiers  arrived  and  were  placed  in  front  of 
them  with  rifles  levelled  at  them.  The  gendarme 
said  to  the  soldiers:  “Are  you  ready?”  One  of  the 
prisoners,  an  elderly  teacher,  then  prayed  in  a  loud 
voice  as  follows :  “O  Lord,  forgive  thy  servants. 
Thou  art  powerful  to  save  even  now.”  The  words 
were  no  sooner  out  of  his  mouth  than  an  el¬ 
derly  gendarme  came  to  the  gendarme  in  com¬ 
mand  and  whispered  something  to  him.  He 
ordered  the  prisoners  to  fill  up  the  grave 
again,  and  they  were  taken  to  the  prison,  and  even¬ 
tually  Gittelman  was  sent  home.  Two  of  those  shot 
were  teachers,  colleagues  of  his  for  twenty  years. 
It  appears  that  Miss  Rabinovitch,  who  gave  evi¬ 
dence  later,  had  intervened  on  their  behalf. 

Aaron  Rubin,  an  .elderly  manager  of  a  match  fac¬ 
tory,  deposed  that  he  was  present  at  the  co-oper¬ 
ative  meeting.  He  stated  that  the  soldiers  in  the 
large  room  searched  the  people  and  beat  them.  One 
man  had  11,500  roubles  in  his  possession,  which 
was  stolen  from  him.  He  shouted  that  he  had  been 
robbed  of  this  amount.  A  soldier  then  went  down¬ 
stairs,  and  shortly  came  back  and  said :  “Who  has 
shot?”  Rubin  generally  confirmed  the  previous  wit¬ 
ness’s  evidence.  He  was  one  of  those  taken  from 
the  wall  and  taken  to  the  cemetery.  In  the  ceme¬ 
tery  the  soldiers  loaded  their  rifles  and  said  their 
last  moment  had  come.  After  they  had  returned  to 
the  prison,  a  gendarme  interviewed  them  and  en¬ 
deavoured  to  get  a  confession  from  them.  Each 
one  was  taken  separately  in  a  separate  room, 
stripped,  and  beaten  with  straps  and  ramrods.  They 
were  then  all  put  together  in  one  room  half  dead 
from  flogging.  This  included  six  women.  They 
were  told  to  put  on  their  clothes  and  return  to  their 
cells.  On  Tuesday  a  gendarme  came  and  said  that 
if  there  were  an  enquiry  they  must  say  that  they 
had  not  been  beaten.  On  Wednesday  he  was  re¬ 
leased  by  doctor’s  orders. 

A  young  lady  who  desired  her  name  not  to  be 
published,  aged  about  25,  deposed  that  she  went 
to  the  People’s  House  to  enquire  as  to  whether  she 
was  to  participate  in  the  American  money.  Soldiers 
came  in  and  began  to  eat  food  they  found  in  a  cup¬ 
board.  They  were  seeking  young  Jews  for  forced 
labour.  An  elderly  officer  came  and  said  they  were 
all  to  go  into  the  large  room.  They  searched  the 


27 


people,  and  the  first  man  searched  had  over  10,000 
roubles.  In  her  opinion  all  that  followed  was  to 
cover  the  robbery.  She  confirmed  the  statement 
that  they  were  all  taken  outside  the  Komrnan- 
datur.  She  confirmed  the  interview  with  Dr. 
Bakraba,  but  added  that  Dr.  Bakraba  himself 
beat  a  girl  named  Eisenberg.  No  question  was 
put  to  them.  They  remained  in  the  street.  They 
expected  they  would  be  brought  into  the  Komman- 
datur  but  were  not,  and  remained  in  the  street.  A 
passer-by  named  Krasalstchik,  who  was  walking  on 
the  pavement  with  a  Miss  Polak,  was  taken  by  the 
soldiers  and  included  with  the  prisoners,  and  even¬ 
tually  shot.  They  were  then  all  taken  to  the  mar¬ 
ket-place  and  put  against  the  wall  of  the  church. 
All  was  dark.  She  saw  some  of  the  women  led 
away  a  short  distance,  so  she  walked  out  of  the  line 
too.  All  those  remaining  at  the  wall  were  given 
time  to  say  their  last  words.  A  teacher  chanted 
the  last  Jewish  prayers  for  the  dying,  and  the  others 
repeated  them  after  him.  They  were  then  shot 
dead.  The  survivors  were  told  their  time  would 
come  on  the  morrow,  and  that  they  would  be 
hanged.  From  the  wall  they  were  led  to  the  prison. 
The  women  were  in  a  separate  room.  The  Polish 
guard  treated  them  very  badly,  but  the  Governor 
of  the  prison  treated  them  kindly.  The  warders 
said  they  would  be  shot.  A  gendarme  came  later 
and  they  were  all  led  to  a  room,  stripped  naked,  re¬ 
volvers  put  to  their  heads  and  flogged.  They  were 
then  turned  out  of  the  room  naked  with  their  clothes 
in  their  hands  into  a  corridor  full  of  soldiers,  who 
kicked  and  struck  them.  They  were  then«sent  into 
another  room  where  they  dressed  and  were  allowed 
to  go  free. 

M.  Abrahamovitch  gave  evidence  that  he  heard  a 
noise,  was  frightened,  and  hid  in  the  roof  of  the 
synagogue  on  the  other  side  of  the  market-place. 
At  a  quarter  to  9  in  the  evening  of  Saturday  he 
heard  firing  and  groans  that  lasted  all  night,  and  sol¬ 
diers  laughing.  One  of  the  men,  Palatzny,  was  shot 
and  only  slightly  wounded ;  at  5  :30  on  the  morning 
of  the  6th  April  he  got  up  and  ran  away.  He  was 
observed  by  the  soldiers  and  shot  dead. 

Sonia  Rabinovitch,  a  girl  student  from  Kieff,  was 
staying  at  Pinsk  with  her  father.  Polish  officers 
lived  at  her  father’s  house,  and  she  was  able  to 
intervene  to  save  the  people  at  the  cemetery.  (I 
have  no  doubt  that  the  eventual  release  of  these  peo¬ 
ple  was  the  direct  consequence  of  the  arrival  of  an 
American  officer  who  began  to  make  enquiries.) 

An  official  statement  relative  to  these  events 
issued  on  the  7th  April  by  General  Listovski,  com¬ 
mander  of  the  group,  I  find  devoid  of  all  credence. 

The  treatment  meted  out  to  these  so-called  Jewish 
Bolsheviks  is  in  contrast  to  the  treatment  of  avow¬ 
edly  Bolshevik  Poles.  M.  Gabryl  Kiewicz  was  com¬ 
missary  for  the  town,  a  post  corresponding  to  mayor, 
during  the  Bolshevik  occupation,  and  he  is  now  a 
paid  official  in  the  Election  Office.5  M.  Melech, 
who  was  administrator  of  the  Food  Department  for 
the  Bolsheviks,  is  now  employed  in  the  municipal 
administration. 

In  conversation  with  local  Christian  Poles  the 


Mission  was  informed  that  the  town  was  heartily 
ashamed  of  this  dreadful  tragedy,  and  believed  that 
the  people  massacred  were  quite  innocent. 

In  conclusion,  I  may  state  that  Major  Luczynski 
and  Lieutenant  Landsberg,  who  were  in  command 
on  the  occasion  mentioned,  in  no  way  have  been  pun¬ 
ished.  They  have  simply  been  removed  to  other 
posts.  I  have  endeavoured  unsuccessfully  to  see 
Major  Luczynski. 

Under  the  present  local  administration  Pinsk  is 
once  more  peaceful,  and  the  relations  between  the 
Christian  and  the  non-Christian  inhabitants  have 
become  normal. 

Lida. — On  the  16th  April,  1919,  the  Poles  attacked 
the  Bolshevik  troops  occupying  Lida,  this  being  the 
second  day  of  the  Jewish  Passover.  The  Jews 
were  frightened  and  there  were  only  ten  Jews  in  the 
synagogue,  the  rest  remaining  in  their  houses.  It 
was  proved  to  my  satisfaction  that  on  the  16th  the 
Bolsheviks  ordered  all  their  soldiers  to  leave  their 
billets  and  return  to  barracks.  This  they  refused 
to  do,  and  when  the  Polish  troops  entered  the  town, 
they  shot  at  them  from  the  windows  of  the  houses. 
This  was  in  the  poorer  Jewish  quarter,  because 
most  of  the  best  houses  were  taken  possession  of 
by  officers,  leaving  the  less  desirable  houses  to  be 
occupied  by  their  men.  Consequently  when  the 
Polish  troops  eventually  entered  the  town  on  the 
morning  of  the  17th  they  attacked  the  Jewish  quar¬ 
ter,  killing  on  the  two  days,  the  16th  and  the  17th, 
thirty-five  Jews.  The  case  of  the  man  Poukoff  and 
his  son,  who  were  first  robbed  of  150,000  roubles 
and  then  taken  out  into  the  street  and  shot  without 
trial,  was  a  particularly  bad  case.  In  fact,  the  bulk 
of  the  people  killed  were  either  murdered  in  their 
houses  or  shot  outside  them.  On  the  19th  only 
there  was  a  court-martial,  when  six  Jews  and  two 
Christians  were  sentenced  to  be  shot.  On  the  17th 
200  Jews  were  arrested  in  the  Jewish  quarter,  but 
were  released  without  any  trial  after  five  days.  The 
Rabbi  of  the  place,  Rabbi  Rabbinovitch,  was  ar¬ 
rested,  robbed  and  beaten,  together  with  many  other 
Jews.  On  the  18th  a  body  of  a  soldier  was  found 
mutilated,  and  the  Jews  were  accused  of  having 
murdered  him ;  this  caused  great  excitement  in  the 
town.  It  was  said  that  a  Catholic  priest  intervened, 
and  asked  in  church  that  anyone  who  knew  any¬ 
thing  of  the  case  should  inform  him.  Later  the 
excitement  died  down,  and  the  rumour  was  spread 
that  the  priest  had  interfered  to  say  that  the  mur¬ 
derer  was  not  a  Jew.  The  priest  referred  to  had  left 
Lida,  and  I  was  unable  to  obtain  confirmation  of  this 
story,  but  believe  it  to  be  true. 

Vilna  was  taken  from  the  Bolsheviks  on  the  19th 
April,  1919,  by  Polish  troops.  The  rumour  was 
spread  that  the  Jews  had  shot  at  the  Polish  soldiers, 
whereupon  soldiers  and  civilians  commenced  a  mas¬ 
sacre  and  robbery  of  the  Jews  which  lasted  three 
days.  Fifty-five  Jews  were  killed,  including  two 
well-known  authors,  MM.  Weiter  and  Ivianski,  a 
large  number  were  wounded  and  2,000  arrested  as 
sympathisers  with  the  Bolsheviks.  Of  these  1,000 
were  released  upon  guarantees  being  given,  and  the 


28 


remainder  were  removed  to  internment  camps  under 
conditions  of  the  greatest  hardship.  Most  of  these 
poor  people  have  been  kept  in  these  unsanitary 
and  loathsome  camps,  suffering  hunger  and  fre¬ 
quent  beatings,  without  trial,  and  had  not  been  re¬ 
leased  at  the  time  of  the  mission’s  visit  in  Novem¬ 
ber.  Amongst  those  arrested  for  having  shot  at  the 
Polish  soldiers  were  the  Rev.  I.  Rubinstein,  one  of 
the  principal  Rabbis,  and  Dr.  Shabad,  the  head  of 
the  community.  I  may  add  that  the  19th  April  was 
a  Saturday,  when,  being  the  Jewish  Sabbath,  a 
Rabbi  would  be  most  unlikely  to  carry  or  use  fire¬ 
arms.  Nevertheless,  these  gentlemen  were  marched 
by  soldiers  through  the  streets,  beaten  and  spat 
upon  not  only  by  the  mob,  but  also  by  well-dressed 
ladies  and  gentlemen,  till  they  reached  a  garden 
where  they  were  informed  that  they  were  about  to 
be  shot.  After  a  detention  during  which  they  ex¬ 
pected  every  minute  to  be  their  last,  these  gentle¬ 
men  eventually  were  released  through  the  interven¬ 
tion  of  an  officer  and  sent  home.  The  killing  and 
plundering  lasted  for  three  days,  many  houses  being 
completely  looted  and  the  synagogue  desecrated,  in 
spite  of  the  presence  in  the  city  of  General  Joseph 
Pilsudski,  the  Chief  of  the  State.  Officers  stated 
publicly  that  they  regarded  all  the  Vilna  Jews  as 
enemies  and  sympathisers  with  Bolsheviks.  A  cer¬ 
tain  number  of  Jews,  owing  to  their  better  educa¬ 
tion,  undoubtedly  acted  as  officials  during  the  Bol¬ 
shevik  regime.  But  the  fact  of  Christian  Poles  act¬ 
ing  in  a  similar  manner  does  not  seem  to  have 
aroused  resentment.  My  attention  was  called  to 
several  instances  where  former  Bolshevik  officials 
still  occupied  public  offices.  M.  Solimani  was  on 
the  Economical  Council  of  the  Bolsheviks,  and  at 
the  time  of  the  mission’s  visit  was  in  the  Agricul¬ 
tural  Department;  but  is  now  a  Polish  railway  offi¬ 
cial.  M.  Jachimoricz,  of  the  Bolshevik  Economical 
Department,  is  now  secretary  to  the  Municipality 
of  Vilna.  The  Jews  do  not  appear,  however,  to 
have  supported  the  Bolsheviks  in  a  military  sense. 
The  Bolsheviks  publicly  complained  that  only  1  per 
cent,  of  their  army  were  Jews.  With  regard  to  the 
alleged  shooting  by  Jews  upon  Polish  troops,  M. 
Zmaczynski,  President  of  the  Court  of  the  province, 
and  M.  Buyko,  Vice-President  of  the  Court,  both 
gentlemen  of  high  character,  informed  the  mission 
that  they  themselves  had  seen  Jewish  men  and 
women  (civilians)  firing  for  two  hours  in  Populanki 
and  Alexandrovska  Boulevard. 

Further,  there  was  submitted  for  my  inspection  an 
official  copy  of  a  declaration  purporting  to  be  signed 
by  four  members  of  the  Danish  Legation,  Section  B, 
at  Petrograd,  to  the  efifect  that  on  the  19th  April 
at  the  Vilna  railway  station,  they  had  been  wit¬ 
nesses  of  a  fusillade  directed  by  the  Jewish  civil 
population  against  the  Polish  troops.  With  regard 
to  this  statement,  the  Danish  Legation  at  Warsaw 
was  kind  enough  to  make  some  enquiry  at  the  Dan¬ 
ish  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs.  The  Danish  Gov¬ 
ernment  in  reply  communicated  to  His  Majesty’s 
Government  the  following  declaration  by  the  former 
Danish  Minister  at  Petrograd  : — 

“I  have  the  honour  to  state  that  two  of 


the  signatories  of  the  document  in  question, 
Sachsenburg  and  Ernst,  both  Austrians,  were 
at  one  time  employed  in  Section  B  at  the 
Danish  Legation,  the  former  in  the  Passport 
Office,  the  latter  as  a  copying  clerk.  Dr. 
Klein  I  do  not  recall.  As  stated  in  this  Le¬ 
gation’s  report  No.  221  of  the  6th  December 
last,  there  has  never  been  any  Danish  Mis¬ 
sion  at  Vilna  or  Warsaw,  and  when  the  in¬ 
dividuals  concerned  state,  in  a  document 
dated  Warsaw,  the  25th  April,  1919,  that  they 
are  members  of  the  Royal  Danish  Legation, 
this  allegation  must  be  regarded  as  entirely 
unjustifiable  and  deserves  to  be  repudiated. 
It  would  lead  very  far  if  all  persons  who  at 
any  time  have  been  employed  in  Section  B 
were  to  be  entitled  for  the  rest  of  their  lives 
to  describe  themselves  as  ‘members  of  the 
Royal  Danish  Legation.’  The  declaration  is, 
as  far  as  I  can  judge,  perfectly  authentic.” 

If  Jewish  civilians  actually  did  fire  upon  Polish 
soldiers — and  I  found  it  impossible  to  distinguish 
between  the  type  of  Jew  prevailing  in  the  Vilna- 
Pinsk  district  and  that  of  the  ordinary  Russian  or 
Tartar  inhabitants — the  fact  cannot  justify  the 
whole  civilian  population  being  handed  over  de¬ 
fenceless  to  massacre  and  rapine.  I  regret  to  state 
that  no  official  investigation  has  been  made  into 
these  outrages  and  no  one  punished. 

The  excesses  reported  from  Cracow  and  Lodz 
took  the  form  of  local  riots  arising  from  transient 
causes.  Though  considerable  property  was  de¬ 
stroyed  and  plundered  and  many  Jews  seriously  as¬ 
saulted  both  by  soldiers  and  civilians,  there  was  no 
actual  loss  of  life  except  that  of  one  man — although 
that  is  one  too  many — at  the  latter  place.  I  am  of 
opinion  that  the  affair  at  Lodz  might  have  attained 
considerably  less  proportions  if,  when  the  police 
proved  unequal  to  quell  the  disturbance,  the  military 
authorities  had  acted  with  greater  promptitude. 

A  young  man,  Selig  Lipman,  a  survivor  of  an  at¬ 
tack  on  a  farm  at  Slobodka  Lesna,  made  the  follow- 
lowing  declaration  before  me  at  Warsaw.6 

Farm  at  Slobodka  Lesna 

“In  peace  time  the  farm  was  an  agricultural  col¬ 
lege,  and  there  were  between  sixty  and  seventy  stu¬ 
dents.  It  is  an  estate  belonging  to  the  Jewish 
Colonial  Association  situated  near  the  village  of 
Lesna.  The  students  were  being  prepared  for  agri¬ 
cultural  work  in  Palestine.  There  are  two  houses 
on  the  farm :  one  the  house  of  the  director  and  the 
other  where  the  pupils  were  housed.  At  the  time 
of  the  following  events  there  were  at  the  college 
thirteen  boy  and  four  girl  students. 

“On  the  6th  June,  1919,  the  army  of  General 
Zeligowsky  was  marching  from  Russia  through 
Roumania  to  Poland. 

“The  farm  is  situated  near  the  main  road,  and  the 
students  were  engaged  at  their  usual  occupations 
when  some  of  the  artillery  of  this  army  and  about 
200  cavalry  halted  not  far  from  the  farm.  Pickets 
were  placed  at  the  two  entrances  to  the  farm. 


29 


“An  officer,  a  corporal  and  some  soldiers  came  to 
the  director’s  house.  A  cart  was  in  front  of  the 
house  loaded  with  grain.  The  soldiers  took  five 
sacks.  A  portion  of  the  picket  meanwhile  sur¬ 
rounded  the  students’  house.  They  proceeded  to 
whip  the  students.  I  myself  was  not  in  the  house 
as  I  was  engaged  in  getting  some  cows  out  of  the 
stable.  I  understand  the  soldiers  asked  the  students 
if  they  were  Polish.  They  replied:  ‘No,  they  were 
Jews.’  Whereupon  the  soldiers  began  to  beat  them 
with  swords.  One  of  the  boys,  whilst  being  beaten, 
put  up  his  hand  to  protect  himself,  and  had  his  hand 
badly  wounded  by  a  sword.  He  then  attempted  to 
escape,  but  was  unable  to  do  so  as  he  was  followed 
by  mounted  soldiers.  So  he  threw  himself  flat  on 
the  ground  and  they  rode  over  him.  He  then 
sought  refuge  in  a  distillery. 

“The  rest  of  the  boys  were  driven  into  the  black¬ 
smith’s  foundry.  The  soldiers  then  shot  dead  three 
of  them : — 

“Samuel  Presser,  aged  19,  was  killed  instantan¬ 
eously. 

“Joseph  Ball,  aged  18,  and  .  , 

“Zevi  Rothenburg,  aged  18  f  died  short|y  after' 

“Subsequently  the  soldiers  went  to  the  distillery 
where  the  boy,  Jacob  Wilf,  had  taken  refuge  and 
shot  him  three  times.  He  was  not  mortally 
wounded  and  has  since  recovered. 

“Ball,  who  was  still  living,  was  removed  by  two 
girl  students  to  their  room.  This  was  discovered 
by  the  soldiers,  who  went  there  and  shot  him  dead 
through  the  head.  Rothenburg,  already  dead,  had 
his  throat  cut  by  the  soldiers. 

“The  girls  then  hid  themselves,  and,  not  being 
discovered,  were  not  molested. 

“The  whole  of  the  proceedings  only  lasted  half- 
an-hour.  When  I  returned  from  the  stables  the 
whole  business  had  finished.  As  soon  as  the  sol¬ 
diers  came  to  the  house  I  was  ordered  by  the  di 
rector  to  get  the  cows  into  the  meadow,  and  so  was 
not  present  when  the  above,  events  took  place. 

“The  soldiers  asked  the  Director  if  he  was  a  Jew, 
and  he  stated  that  he  was  a  Czech,  and  was  there¬ 
fore  not  molested. 

“On  the  previous  night  these  same  soldiers  killed 
a  Jewish  family  of  six  people;  a  Ruthenian  peasant 
(non-Jewish)  was  taken  into  a  forest  and  shot,  and 
another  Ruthenian  peasant  flogged  and  beaten. 

“(Signed)  SELIG  LIPMAN.” 

Having  dealt  with  these  excesses  in  detail,  I  will 
now  proceed  to  consider  them  as  a  whole. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  ascertain  the  number  of  lives 
lost  through  these  painful  occurrences,  but,  taking 
the  lowest  figure  in  cases  of  doubt,  the  total  cannot 
be  less  than  348.  These  figures,  terrible  though 
they  be,  fail  to  convey  an  impression  of  the  terrible 
condition  of  apprehension  and  anxiety  under  which 
the  Jews  labour.  The  military  authorities,  under 
the  pretext  of  military  necessity,  arbitrarily  took 


Jews,  but  rarely  Christians,  for  forced  labour.  There 
was  seldom  any  necessary  labour  to  be  performed, 
and  on  most  occasions  upon  payment  of  a  bribe 
these  men  were  released.  In  one  town,  Bobrojuisk, 
Jews  were  taken  from  the  Synagogue  on  the  Day  of 
Atonement  and  forced  to  remove  dung  from  the 
military  stables  and  streets.  Even  old  men  were 
forced  to  do  this  work.  At  Lemberg  Jews  were 
taken  for  forced  labour  at  any  time  of  the  night. 
In  order  to  avoid  this  the  Jewish  Relief  Committee 
undertook  to  provide  labourers.  They  paid  nearly 
three  million  crowns  in  bribery,  but  Jews  were  still 
taken  and  sent  back,  as  there  was  no  work  for  them 
to  do,  though  at  that  same  time  still  more  Jews 
were  being  taken  in  the  streets  for  forced  labour. 

Unfortunately  their  distinctive  dress  and  mien, 
and  their  practice  of  not  cutting  the  beard,  in  accord¬ 
ance  with  the  Biblical  precept,  render  them  easy 
butts  for  hooligan  humour.  My  attention  was  di¬ 
rected  to  numerous  cases  of  Jews  being  assaulted 
and  robbed  in  railway  trains,  and  their  beards  cut 
at  railway  stations,  nearly  all  these  outrages  being 
perpetrated  by  soldiers  travelling  on  the  railway. 
The  railway  authorities  appear  to  have  been  both 
unwilling  and  unable  to  restrain  these  excesses.  In 
no  instance  was  I  able  to  ascertain  that  any  punish¬ 
ment  followed  the  offence. 

I  noticed  in  several  towns,  more  especially  in 
Warsaw,  that  the  streets  in  the  Jewish  quarter  were 
left  uncleaned  and  were  in  a  state  of  worse  repair 
than  other  parts  of  the  city.  It  does  not  appear  to 
be  recognised  that  a  sanitary  danger  to  a  portion 
of  the  community  involves  sanitary  danger  to  the 
whole. 

On  several  occasions  the  resentment  of  the  sol¬ 
diery  and  civil  population  was  aroused  by  the  Zion¬ 
ists’  claim  to  Jewish  nationality  as  opposed  to  Polish 
nationality.  The  same  claim  was  declared  to  me  by 
Government  officials  to  be  the  reason  for  the  non-ad¬ 
mission  of  Jews  into  the  Post  Office  and  other  Gov¬ 
ernment  offices,  but  no  evidence  was  adduced  to  me 
that  Jews  not  so  declaring  themselves  of  separate 
nationality  were  able  to  secure  appointments. 

A  serious  feature  of  the  situation  is  the  fact  that 
it  is  very  difficult  for  the  Jews  to  otain  redress  and 
restitution.  Although  nominally  every  citizen  is 
free  to  approach  the  Government,  actually  repre¬ 
sentations  produce  no  result. 

At  present  the  Jews  are  considerably  under  repre¬ 
sented  in  the  Polish'  Parliament  (Sejm),  having 
only  1 1  out  of  390  seats.7  This  is  largely  owing  to 
the  manner  in  which  the  boundaries  of  the  present 
constituencies  are  drawn.  Until  they  secure  a  rep¬ 
resentation  of  about  forty  members,  which  is  about 
their  proportion  of  the  general  population,  it  will 
be  difficult  for  them  to  make  any  appreciable  im¬ 
pression  upon  public  opinion.  Most  cf  the  requests 
made  to  the  Polish  Government  appear  to  be  met 
with  the  reply  that  the  Jews  have  their  privileges 
in  accordance  with  their  numerical  proportion  to  the 
rest  of  the  population.  Whilst  this  rejoinder  is 
apparently  frank  and  just,  it  is  nevertheless  spe¬ 
cious  ;  the  Jews,  as  in  most  other  parts  of  the  world, 


30 


have  specialised  in  definite  occupations.  To  answer 
their  complaints,  when  their  own  representative  in¬ 
dustries  are  attacked,  to  the  effect  that  they  have 
their  proper  proportion  of  privileges,  appears  to  be 
a  refinement  of  casuistry.  I  feel,  however,  that  the 
Government  eventually  will  be  able  to  make  its 
sobering  influence  more  directly  felt  by  the  gen¬ 
eral  population;  meanwhile  the  Jews  must  have  pa¬ 
tience  in  order  to  give  time  for  this  to  become  effec¬ 
tive. 

I  have  striven  to  detail  and  discuss  the  distressing 
incidents  under  investigation  with  a  restraint  befit¬ 
ting  the  official  mission  with  which  I  have  had  the 
honour  to  be  entrusted.  I  feel  bound,  however,  to 
place  on  record  the  pain  and  horror  with  which  I 
listened  to  the  eye-witnesses  of  these  callous  and 
bloodthirsty  crimes  by  which  so  many  innocent  and 
harmless  people  were  done  to  death. 

I  consider  that  the  bare  recital  of  these  terrible 
events  is  enough  to  reveal  how  insecure  are  Jewish 
life  and  property  in  Poland,  and  how  easily — if  the 
evil  causes  at  work  be  not  speedily  removed — ex¬ 
cesses  may  break  out  again,  possibly  upon  a  far 
more  serious  scale. 

Many  countries  have  been  affected  by  temporary 
waves  of  anti-Semitism.  The  movement  has  been 
somewhat  accentuated  in  Poland  at  the  present 
time  owing  to  war,  famine  and  the  difficult  political 
position.  Poles  generally  are  of  a  generous  nature, 
and  if  the  present  incitements  of  the  press  were 
repressed  by  a  strong  official  hand  Jews  would  be 
able  to  live,  as  they  have  done  for  the  past  800 
years,  on  good  terms  with  their  fellow  citizens  in 
Poland. 

In  the  hope  of  assisting  this  desirable  consumma¬ 
tion  I  have  the  honour  to  submit  the  following 
recommendations  for  the  consideration  of  His 
Majesty’s  Government.  I  won  d  draw  your  atten¬ 
tion  to  the  fact  that  I  have  not  embodied  in  this  re¬ 
port  any  matters  which  I  was  not  able  to  investigate 
personally  during  the  stay  of  the  mission  in  Po¬ 
land  : — 

Recommendations 

1.  That  the  Polish  Government  be  urged  to  carry 
out  the  clauses  of  the  Minority  Treaty  of  June  28, 
1919,  in  a  spirit  of  sympathy  with  its  Jewish  sub¬ 
jects.  A  State  can  only  be  strong  when  all  sections 

of  its  inhaitants  are  working  unitedly  and  in  mutual  ^ 
confidence  for  its  welfare.  *£'/ 

2.  That  a  genuine  and  not  a  “masked”  equality 
be  accorded  to  the  Jewish  population  of  Poland. 

3.  That  all  outrages  against  the  person  or  prop¬ 
erty  of  the  subject,  irrespective  of  religion  or  race, 
should  be  promptly  punished  and  the  names  of  the 
delinquents  published.  This  latter  action  is  espe¬ 
cially  necessary,  inasmuch  as  the  State  does  not 
punish  out  of  revenge  but  as  a  deterrent  to  others. 

4.  That  Jews  in  East  Galicia  be  restored  to  their 


official  positions  in  the  same  manner  as  non-Jews 
have  been. 

5.  That  Jewish  railway  officials  and  employees 
be  restored  to  their  posts  in  the  same  manner  as 
non-Jews  have  been. 

6.  That  no  restrictions  should  be  placed  upon  the 
number  of  Jews  admitted  to  the  Universities. 

7.  That  a  decree  be  published  declaring  boycotts 
illegal,  and  ordering  all  publications  advocating 
boycott  to  be  suspended.8 

8.  That  all  prisoners  in  internment  camps  be 
brought  to  immediate. trial,  and  that  humane  treat¬ 
ment  be  assured  to  all  interned  prisoners. 

9.  That  facilities  be  afforded  for  the  introduction 
of  new  industries  into  Poland  with  a  view  to  con¬ 
verting  a  larger  proportion  of  the  Jewish  population 
into  producers. 

10.  That  the  British  Government  should  assist 
Jews  wishing  to  emigrate  from  Poland  by  providing 
facilities  to  proceed  to  countries  such  as  Palestine, 
Canada,  South  Africa,  Algeria  and  South  America, 
or  any  other  country  desiring  to  receive  them. 

11.  That  banks  be  established  possessing  the  con¬ 
fidence  of  the  Jewish  public,  so  that  money  might  be 
deposited  therein  instead  of  being  carried  on  the 
person  or  concealed  in  dwellings.9 

12.  That  the  desirability  of  a  secretary  who  un¬ 
derstands  and  speaks  Yiddish  being  added  to  the 
staff  of  His  Majesty’s  Legation  at  Warsaw  be  con¬ 
sidered. 

I  have  to  thank  M.  Hendryk  Wolowski,  of  the 
Polish  Foreign  Office,  who  was  detailed  to  act  as 
liaison  officer  between  the  British  Mission  and  the 
various  Ministries,  for  his  invaluable  services  in 
securing  such  information  as  was  desired,  and  for 
his  courteous  aid  and  assistance  in  furthering  the 
object  and  securing  the  comfort  of  the  mission  dur¬ 
ing  its  stay  in  Poland. 

I  hpe  also  to  inform  you  that  consequent  upon 
the  introduction  of  the  mission  by  Sir  Percy  Wynd- 
ham, Alien  British  Minister,  to  M.  de  Skrzynski,  act¬ 
ing  Prime  Minister  in  M.  Paderewski’s  absence, 
every  assistance  was  rendered  by  the  Polish  Gov¬ 
ernment  to  the  mission  in  prosecuting  its  enquiry. 

I  beg  to  thank  you  for  the  advice  and  assistance 
you  rendered  me. 

I  desire  to  add  that  Mr.  Sidney  Phillips  and  Mr. 
David  Bassis  rendered  efficient  service  respectively 
as  secretary  and  interpreter. 

I  have,  &c. 

STUART  M.  SAMUEL. 

Sir  Horace  Rumbold,  Bart.,  K.C.M.G.,  M.V.O. 


31 


Footnotes 


1  An  entirely  different  light  is  thrown  on  this  matter  in 
the  report  of  Captain  Wright,  who,  on  page  41,  in  speaking 
of  the  election,  says:  “In  1912  the  dispute  between  Poles 
and  Jews,  assiduously  encouraged  by  the  Tsarist  authorities, 
came  to  an  issue  in  the  Duma  elections.  The  Warsaw  Jews, 
by  a  neat  but  perfectly  legitimate  manoeuvre,  got  control  of 
the  elections,  and,  with  sardonic  humor,  returned  to  the 
Duma  a  member  of  such  kind  that  whenever  the  representa¬ 
tive  of  the  capital  of  Poland  got  on  his  feet  the  Duma 
roared  with  laughter.”  Jagiello  belonged  to  the  faction  of 
the  Socialist  party  which  had  renounced  Polish  independence, 
hence,  far  from  being  patriotic,  the  Jews  had  chosen  as  their 
representative  a  man  who  had  openly  bowed  to  Russian  domi¬ 
nation.  The  Polish  Socialists  did  not  support  Jagiello. 

2  and  3  In  the  Letter  of  Transmittal,  Sir  H.  Rumbold  says: 
“Sir  Stuart  Samuel  would  appear  to  be  mistaken  in  his  appre¬ 
ciation  of  the  part  played  by  the  Jews  in  the  pre-war  business 
relations  between  Poland  and  Russia,  and  in  the  industry 
of  the  former  country.  Whereas  it  is  true  that  the  goods 
exported  from  Poland  were  to  a  large  extent  handled  by  the 
Jews,  only  a  small  percentage  of  those  goods  were  actually 
manufactured  by  them.  The  cotton  industry  in  Lodz  owes 
its  development  more  to  the  Polish  industrial  community 
of  German  extraction  than  to  the  Jews.  The  statement  that 
the  initiative  in  business  was  almost  entirely  a  prerogative 
of  the  Jews  is  exaggerated.  A  case  in  point  are  the  co¬ 
operatives,  which  are  exclusively  Polish.”  Statistics  compiled 
before  the  war  showed  that  only  33  per  cent,  of  the  factories 
were  in  the  hands  of  Jews. 

4  Even  the  Jews  have  almost  without  exception  admitted 
that  their  race  in  Poland  has  for  centuries  had  the  lowest 
standing  of  living  of  all  the  residents  of  Poland.  The  recent 
typhus  epidemic  was  far  more  extensive  among  the  Jews 
than  the  Poles  because  the  louse-carried  disease  flourished 
amid  the  filth  of  the  Jewish  abodes.  Captain  Wright  in  his 
report  says :  “This  civilization  of  nothing  less  than  half  the 
Polish  Jews  is  not  only  far  from  European,  but  it  is  also 
very  primitive.  It  is  the  civilization  of  the  age  of  Ezra  and 
Nehemiah  in  the  fifth  century  before  the  Christian _ ” 


6  A  great  distinction  was  drawn  between  those  cases  in 
which  the  individuals  who  accepted  office  under  the  invaders 
did  so  in  order  to  lighten  the  impositions  upon  their  fellow 
citizens  and  those  in  which  the  offices  were  sought  by  persons 
frankly  anxious  to  desert  the  Polish  cause.  All  cases  of  this 
kind  were  tried  for  high  treason,  and  the  fact  that  the  in¬ 
dividuals  here  mentioned  were  acquitted  is  proof  of  the  fact 
that  they  did  not  turn  against  their  country,  but  merely  ac¬ 
cepted  distasteful  positions  in  the  interests  of  Poles. 

6  Though  Sir  Stuart  Samuel  here  fully  credits  the  unsup¬ 
ported  story  of  a  young  Jew  he  says  on  page  28  that  “An 
official  statement. ...  issued  on  the  7th  of  April  by  General 
Listovski,  commander  of  the  group,  I  find  devoid  of  all 
credence.”  In  several  cases  he  gives  unsupported  testimony 
which  “was  proved  to  my  satisfaction”  without  giving  further 
sources. 

7  Poland  has  general  man  and  woman  suffrage.  In  addi¬ 
tion,  the  law  provides  for  proportional  representation,  guar¬ 
anteeing  the  representation  of  minorities.  An  equal  number 
of  voters  is  in  all  cases  entitled  to  equal  representation.  Vot¬ 
ing  is  by  secret  ballot.  There  exists  no  reason  why  Jews 
cannot  by  voting  obtain  the  full  representation  that  their 
strength  warrants. 

8  Though  the  Polish  Government  has  in  many  cases  taken 
drastic  steps  against  boycott  movements  and  has  removed 
army  officials  because  of  their  tolerance  of  boycotts,  the 
recommendation  here  given  would  cause  the  Government  of 
a  free  country  to  take  a  step  backward  to  suppression  and 
reaction. 

*  Sir  Rumbold  says :  “I  would  point  out  that  there  exists 
a  national  loan  bank - and  that  there  is  no  difference  be¬ 

tween  Poles  and  Jews  regarding  the  business  transacted  at 
the  bank.  Polish  legislation - makes  no  difficulties  with  re¬ 

gard  to  the  founding  of  banks  by  Jews,  so  the  latter  are  able, 
if  they  need  it,  to  start  banks  in  which  they  have  confidence.” 


32 


The  Captain  Wright  Report 


ENCLOSURE  NO.  2. 

Sir, 

THE  Mission  arrived  in  Warsaw  on  the  18th 
September,  1919.  Sir  Stuart  Samuel,  the  Chief 
Commissioner,  left  on  the  6th  December,  and  I  left 
on  the  18th  December.  This  report  was  written  be¬ 
fore  my  departure. 

The  chief  task  imposed  on  the  Commission  sent 
out  to  examine  the  condition  of  the  Jews  in  Poland 
was  to  enquire  into  any  excesses  committed  against 
the  Jews  that  might  be  brought  to  the  notice  of  the 
Commission.  But  on  enquiries  into  these  excesses 
I  found,  as  might  be  expected,  they  were  only  the 
expression  of  a  mutual  animosity.  Therefore  no 
examination  of  the  excesses  could  be  complete  un¬ 
less  we  enquired  into  the  nature  and  origin  of  their 
animosity.  But  on  enquiring  into  this  deep  and 
ancient  quarrel,  I  found  no  examination  of  it  could 
be  complete  unless  we  enquired  into  the  history  of 
the  Jews  in  Poland.  One  subject  thus  leading  to 
another,  I  wished,  even  at  the  risk  of  appearing 
pedantic  or  presumptuous  or  superficial,  to  try  to 
understand  and  to  explain,  first,  the  past  history  of 
the  Jews  in  Poland;  secondly,  the  causes  of  the  un¬ 
paralleled  anti-Semitic  feeling  existing  there;  and 
lastly,  those  excesses  which  are  the  effects  of  these 
violent  feelings. 

There  was  another  reason  for  extending 
the  enquiry  to  these  rather  too-distant  limits. 
The  Poles  complained  bitterly  of  foreign 
Commissions  meddling  with  their  national 
affairs  without  any  acquaintance  with  the 
history  of  their  past,  as  if  they  were  savages 
without  any  past  history  at  all.  This  com¬ 
plaint  seemed  to  me  reasonable  and  just;  for 
our  own  domestic  questions,  like  the  Irish 
question,  for  example,  could  hardly  be  under¬ 
stood  by  foreigners  ignorant  of  and  indiffer¬ 
ent  to  our  past  history.  This  was  another 
reason  for  at  least  endeavoring  to  give  this 
scope  to  our  enquiry,  though  time  and  other 
qualifications  might  perhaps  be  insufficient. 

West  Jews  and  East  Jews 

Even  at  present,  in  spite  of  the  large  outflow  from 
the  original  reservoir  into  the  Western  world  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  three-fifths  of  the  world’s 
Jews  live  in  what  was  once  the  Kingdom  of  Poland. 
A  century  ago,  before  the  outflow  began,  four- 
fifths  or  even  nine-tenths,  did.  In  the  capital  of 
Poland,  Warsaw,  at  least  every  third  person  is  a 
Jew,  and  there  are  600  synagogues ;  in  many  pro¬ 
vincial  towns  four  out  of  five  inhabitants,  in  some 
even  nine  out  of  ten,  are  Jews;  nearly  everything 


printed  that  strikes  the  eye  in  the  streets  of  such 
small  provincial  towns,  is  not  in  our,  but  in  the 
Hebrew  alphabet.  Every  village,  every  estate  has 
one  or  two  Jews  on  it.  At  the  most  only  one  out 
of  every  200  people  in  the  British  Isles  is  Semitic; 
but  in  Poland,  taking  the  whole  country,  one  out 
of  every  seven  at  least. 

But  it  is  a  difference  not  only  in  quantity  but  in 
kind.  The  Germans,  placed  as  they  are  between  the 
Jews  of  Eastern  and  those  of  Western  Europe,  and 
so  able  to  see  the  difference,  always  distinguish  in 
their  numerous  scientific  writings  between  what 
they  call  East  Jews  and  West  Jews,  and  these  names 
are  convenient. 

Language  is  the  most  easily  discernible,  as  it  is 
the  strongest  proof,  of  the  differences.  West  Jews, 
in  an  overwhelming  majority,  speak  the  language 
of  their  country.  East  Jews  do  not:  among  them¬ 
selves  they  speak,  with  slight  variations  in  different 
districts,  a  Middle-High  German  dialect,  contemp¬ 
tuously  called  jargon  in  Eastern  Europe,  and  where 
it  survives  in  the  East  End  of  London,  as  Yiddish. 
It  is  often  treated  as  a  debased  form  of  German,  but 
it  is  nothing  of  the  sort,  any  more  than  the  language 
of  Chaucer  is  a  debased  form  of  English.  It  is  a 
mediaeval  dialect,  and  still  spoken  by  the  peasants 
of  the  Black  Forest.  The  very  word  “Yiddish”  is 
the  modern  German  word  “Jiidisch,”  meaning 
Jewish,  pronounced  with  the  correct  mediaeval  ac¬ 
cent. 

To  write  this  Yiddish,  Hebrew  characters  are 
used.  Concurrently  with  it,  Hebrew  is  used  as  a 
religious  language,  and  within  the  last  generation 
the  Zionists  have  endeavoured  to  substitute  it  for 
Yiddish  as  a  popular  language  to  write  magazines, 
conduct  education,  and  to  talk  nothing  else;  but, 
even  as  a  religious  language,  Hebrew  is  not,  as 
among  at  least  the  majority  of  the  West  Jews,  the 
privilege  of  a  few  learned  Semitic  scholars;  it  is  a 
language  that  every  educated  East  Jew  learns  and 
in  which  the  pious  reads  his  sacred  books  with  the 
same  zeal  as  the  pious  Protestant  pores  over  his 
Bible.  The  “Jewish  Press”  in  Western  Europe  is 
newspapers  owned  and  edited  by  Jews;  but  in  East¬ 
ern  Europe  it  means  daily  newspapers  printed  in 
these  old  Semitic  letters,  utterly  different  from 
either  the  Latin  letters  used  by  Poles  or  Hellenic 
letters  used  by  Russians,  and  so  singular  and  unique 
in  Europe  as  the  only  Semitic  alphabet  in  use.  Even 
now  many  Polish  Jews  speak  Polish  with  difficulty, 
and  only  know  this  mediaeval  German  dialect  and 
this  old  Semitic  language  which  is  older  than  many 
portions  of  the  Old  Testament,  written  as  they  were 
when  Jews  had  already  abandoned  Hebrew  for 
Aramaic;  and  I  am  told  that  two  or  three  genera¬ 
tions  ago  this  ignorance  of  anything  but  Yiddish  or 
Hebrew  was  quite  common. 


33 


“The  Jew  in  Eastern  Europe,”  says  an 
Anglo-Jewish  writer,  “differs  from  the  other 
inhabitants  not  only  in  religion  but  also  in 
custom  and  language.  Religion  for  the  Brit¬ 
ish  Jews  is  only  a  matter  of  conscience  and 
tradition ;  it  is  also  for  many  Jews  in  Eastern 
Europe  also  a  question  of  manners  and  cus¬ 
toms.”1  The  many  Jews  he  refers  to  are  the 
Orthodox  Jews,  the  Chassidim  (pious)  who 
constitute  roughly  (though  the  exact  propor¬ 
tion  is  disputable)  half  the  East  Jews.  No¬ 
thing  like  these  East  Jews  exists  among  the 
West  Jews  (or  is  even  known  to  most  of  them, 
I  suspect),  and  the  above  writer  was  under¬ 
stating  the  difference.  The  Orthodox  Jews  in 
Eastern  Europe  are  neither  European  nor 
modern.  The  difference  between  West  Jews 
and  Christians  is,  or  tends  to  be  (as  anti- 
Semites  would  maintain),  a  difference  of  reli¬ 
gion  only  as  they  belong  or  claim  to  belong 
only  to  a  different  denomination.  The  differ¬ 
ence  between  Chassidim  and  Christians  is  not 
even  a  difference  of  religion,  or  even  of  nation¬ 
ality,  but  one  of  civilisation;  they  differ  to  the 
observation  of  the  most  superficial  observer, 
not  in  doctrine  only,  but  in  their  way  of  dress¬ 
ing,  of  living,  of  eating.  Their  dress — to  take 
the  distinction  that  appears  at  once — is  not 
the  same ;  like  their  speech,  it  is  mediaeval :  a 
long  black  gabardine,  and  a  peculiar  cap.  They 
wear  beards  and  side  curls,  not  because  it  is  a 
barber’s  fashion,  but  for  religious  reasons, 
like  other  Orientals.  Their  standard  of  clean¬ 
liness  in  dress  and  living  is  low,  next  to  those 
which  Latin  Christendom  has  always  had  just 
because  its  origin  is  Latin.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  questions  of  food  are  to  them— as  they 
are  to  many  Eastern  castes — questions  of 
religion,  and  their  standard  of  cleanliness,  for 
example,  in  the  choice  and  the  preparation  of 
meat  is  very  much  higher.  I  select  these  out¬ 
ward  differences  because  I  could  observe  them 
myself  during  the  short  period  I  was  brought 
into  contact.  But  I  am  inclined,  from  a  num¬ 
ber  of  concrete  cases  that  came  before  the 
Commission,  to  agree  with  the  Polish  conten¬ 
tion  that  their  standards  of  conduct  are  also 
very  different,  and,  consistently  with  what 
else  I  have  observed  of  them,  neither  Euro¬ 
pean  nor  modern. 

The  resemblance  between  this  small  primi¬ 
tive  Semitic  civilisation,  so  strangely  pre¬ 
served  in  Europe,  and  the  great  Semitic  civil¬ 
isation  of  Islam,  struck  me,  even  though  my 
knowledge  of  each  is  inconsiderable,  and  I 
would  not  venture  on  this  observation  if  it 
were  not  confirmed  by  the  authorities — Ger¬ 
man  for  the  most  part,  I  regret  to  say — which 
I  read  on  the  subject.  The  rigid  monotheism  : 
the  subordinate  position  in  religion  of  women, 
evidently  in  earlier  times  an  absolute  exclu¬ 
sion  ;  the  absence  of  distinction  between  civil 
and  religious  authority,  the  Rabbi  supplying 
both  and  wielding  the  greatest  power:  the 


absence  of  distinction  between  civil  and  reli¬ 
gious  law,  the  sacred  books  supplying  both ; 
the"  existence  of  hereditary  tribes  of  priests 
called  almost  by  the  same  name ;  the  simila¬ 
rity  of  the  calendars :  the  very  schools  where 
boys  sing-song  their  lessons  from  the  sacred 
books  and  the  copious  quotations  from  them 
in  the  same  sing-song  which  adorns  all  grave 
conversation ;  these  mere  outward  points  of 
resemblance  appear  at  once.  Some  of  the 
customs,  such  as  keeping  the  heads  of  women 
shaved  and  making  them  wear  a  wig  or  rib¬ 
bons  or  false  hair,  appear  absolutely  savage. 

The  Chassidim  are  still  the  people  of  the  Book,  as 
Mohammed,  in  the  most  illuminating  phrase  ever 
spoken  about  the  Jews,  called  them.  For  a  book, 
or  rather  a  set  of  books,  rule  their  whole  way  of 
life.  These  are  the  Torah  (what  we  call  the  Pen¬ 
tateuch  and  the  Greek-speaking  authors  of  the  New 
Testament  correctly  translated  into  Greek  as  the 
Law),  every  word,  every  dot  of  which  is  not  only 
sacred  but  has  an  absolute  value  and  must  be  literally 
carried  out:2  on  a  lower  level  Nebiim  (prophets) 
and  Ketubim  (scripture)  :  and  then  a  vast  ency¬ 
clopaedic  work,  the  Talmud,  written  between  the 
second  and  sixth  century  of  our  era,  and  being,  in 
effect,  a  record  of  rabbinical  controversies  of  the 
previous  six  centuries.  In  Torah  and  Talmud  the 
whole  of  human  knowledge  is  contained,  and  out¬ 
side  it  there  is  no  human  knowledge  worth  having;3 
and  piety  consists  of  the  knowledge  and  study  of 
them  and  the  execution  of  the  ritual  and  customs 
found  or  supposed  to  be  found  in  them.  Among 
these  ritual  and  customary  rules  the  chief  are  the 
rules  of  Kosher  food  (Kosher  being  the  word  our 
Bible  translators  translated  as  “clean”),  and  the 
Sabbath. 

Torah,  Nebiim  and  Ketubim  have  been  transmit¬ 
ted  to  Christianity  to  constitute  the  Old  Testament 
together  with  some  of  their  prestige.  But  the 
closest  devotion  to  the  sacred  text  and  the  strictest 
Sabbatarianism  of  the  strictest  Protestants  falls  far 
short  of  the  literal,  rigorous  and  elaborately  legal 
observation  of  the  Torah  by  the  Orthodox  Jews. 
I  will  give  two  examples,  one  of  a  rule  of  Kosher 
(clean),  drawn  from  the  Pentateuch,  and  one  of  the 
Sabbath  rules. 

“Thou  shalt  not  seeth  the  kid  in  its  mother’s 
milk.”  Therefore  no  butter  can  be  eaten  with  meat. 
Therefore,  no  butter  or  milk  must  stand  on  the 
table  at  the  same  time  as  meat.  Therefore,  to  avoid 
any  unintentional  breach  of  the  law,  each  house¬ 
hold  must  possess  a  separate  set  of  crockery,  knives 
and  forks  for  meat  and  milk;  and  Chassidim,  even 
the  poorest,  do  this. 

Work  is  forbidden  on  the  Sabbath.  Therefore 
no  fire  can  be  lit  or  extinguished  on  it.  Therefore 
nothing  should  be  done  which  involves  the  possible 
lighting  or  extinguishing  of  fire.  Therefore  smok¬ 
ing  is  forbidden. 

These  customs,  especially  as  to  food  and  Sabbath, 
and  the  ritual  rules  are  not  few,  but  form  a  large  code, 
the  Shulkhan  Aruch  (Spread  Table).  The  observa- 


34 


tion  of  them  makes  up  the  whole  life  of  the  Ortho¬ 
dox  who  care  for  nothing  else,  and  will  suffer  any¬ 
thing  rather  than  violate  them.  I  can  think  of  two 
cases  of  excesses  brought  before  the  Commission, 
one  in  which  a  Jew  had  been  cruelly  beaten  rather 
than  sign  his  name  on  Saturday,  writing  being,  of 
course,  a  violation  of  the  Sabbath ;  the  other  when 
a  Jew  had  been  badly  mishandled  by  soldiers  rather 
than  let  them  force  a  piece  of  meat  that  was  not 
Kosher  through  his  teeth.  Religion  and  morality 
consist  in  the  keeping  of  these  ritual  and  customary 
rules,  and,  whatever  rationalising  and  “reformed” 
modern  Jews  may  say,  outside  these  ritual  and 
customary  rules  there  is  no  religion  and  morality 
for  the  Orthodox.4  The  difficulties  of  life  are  in 
avoiding  any  breach  of  them ;  for  example,  eating 
an  egg  with  a  drop  of  blood  in  it.  The  perplexities 
of  life  are  in  dealing  with  new  cases ;  for  example,  is 
an  egg,  laid  on  the  Sabbath,  Kosher  or  is  it  not? 

This  civilisation  of  nothing  less  than  half  the 
Polish  Jews  is  not  only  far  from  European,  but  it  is 
also  very  primitive.  It  is  the  civilisation  of  the  age 
of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  in  the  fifth  century  before 
the  Christian  era  when  the  books  of  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  were  edited  in  their  present  form,  materially 
unchanged,  but  only  made  more  rigid  and  sharp  in 
course  of  time.5  That  their  spiritual  life  was  re¬ 
stricted  to  the  Torah,  the  Law  and  these  ritual  and 
customary  rules  is,  of  course,  the  very  criticism 
made  of  the  Jews  by  the  Greek-speaking  authors  of 
the  New  Testament,  but  I  had  never  understood 
that  reproach  until  I  had  seen  the  system  in  full 
swing,  now  as  it  was  2,000  years  ago.  Their  very 
antiquity  made  the  Orthodox  Jews  the  most  in¬ 
teresting  people  in  Poland,  and  their  Rabbis  were 
venerable  with  all  the  dignity  of  the  East.  But  they 
are  not  civilised  in  our  sense  of  the  word,  and  it  is 
impossible  for  Poles  to  amalgamate  with  them,  and 
difficult  to  mix  with  them,  or  even  to  frame  com¬ 
mon  laws  for  them.  Nothing  could  be  more  im¬ 
pressive  than  this  strange  preservation  of  this  old 
Semitic  culture,  which  is  not  only  older  than  Euro¬ 
pean  civilisation,  but  is  older  than  the  civilisations, 
Latin  or  Byzantine,  now  long  extinguished,  from 
which  European  civilisation  is  itself  derived.  The 
ridicule  and  contempt  affected  for  it  by  Poles,  and 
many  Jews  who  are  not  Orthodox,  is  shallow  and 
ignorant.  But  nothing  could  be  more  difficult  to 
associate  with  than  a  people  who  physically,  men¬ 
tally  and  morally  are,  and  whose  whole  conception 
and  way  of  life  is  so  very  different. 

The  presence  of  such  people  as  the  Chassidim  in 
their  midst  must  profoundly  affect  the  minds  of 
ordinary  people,  especially  a  devout,  rustic  people 
like  the  Poles.  There  is  a  general  belief  among  all 
classes  of  Poles  that  the  Jews  practice  ritual  mur¬ 
der;  for  this  there  exists  not  the  slightest  evidence. 
It  is  a  myth  and  an  improbable  myth.  For  Ortho¬ 
dox  Judaism  is  not  a  religion  of  mysterious  rites, 
less  so  indeed  than  Christianity,  but  a  highly  posi¬ 
tive,  defined,  legal  religion.  But  I  think  this  myth, 
strongly  and  widely  believed  as  it  is,  the  reflection 
at  this  antique  and  oriental  religion  casts  in  the 
minds  of  ordinary  men. 


As  the  Orthodox  Jews  now  are,  so  were  all  East 
Jews  till  the  nineteenth  century.  Since  then  this 
original  nucleus,  which  had  kept  intact  and  un¬ 
changed  for  scores  of  centuries,  has  shed  off,  not 
only  the  greater  part  of  the  West  Jews  (the  White¬ 
chapel  Jews  still  refer  to  Poland  in  Yiddish  as 
Home),  but  also  the  Polish  Jews  who  are  not 
Orthodox.  These  resemble  the  West  Jews  as  we 
know  them  in  England,  in  having  become  European 
(though,  of  course,  the  anti-Semitic  thesis  is  that 
they  have  not  yet  and  never  can  become  so),  and 
certainly  in  being,  in  so  far  as  they  are  European¬ 
ised,  ultra  modern ;  for  they  have  broken  with  their 
own  traditional  past  and  are  not  c  mnected  with  the 
traditional  pact  of  Europeans.  The  main  political 
party  of  the  Po'ish  Jews  who  are  not  Orthodox  is 
known,  and  for  a  very  good  reason,  as  I  shall  after¬ 
wards  explain,  as  the  Nationalist  or  Zionist  Party, 
and  for  convenience  and  to  distinguish  them  from 
the  Orthodox,  I  shall  call  them  all  Nationalists, 
though  all  do  not  belong  to  this  Party.  Roughly 
speaking,  and  leaving  out  of  account  very  many 
shades  of  difference,  the  Jews  ‘in  Poland,  who  may 
number,  according  to  the  ultimate  boundaries  as¬ 
signed  to  Poland,  anything  between  three  <md  live 
millions,  fall  under  the  head  of  either  Orthodox  or 
Nationalist. 

This  division  and  nomenclature  omits  the  very 
small  class  of  assimilated  Jews,  who  are,  however, 
the  highest  class  of  Jews,  and  who  are  Polish  in  the 
same  way  as  the  best  kind  of  Jews  in  England  are 
English.6 

The  East  Jews,  Nationalist  or  Zionist,  are  very 
like  the  West  Jews  but  more  strict.  Torah  and 
Talmud  have  both  highest  position,  but  not  only  do 
they  admit  other  forms  of  knowledge,  but  are 
zealots  of  education.  They  respect  Kosher  and  the 
Sabbath,  the  twin  pillars  of  Orthodoxy,  in  various 
degrees,  but  to  the  Orthodox  they  are  mere  un¬ 
believers.  There  is  a  deep  cleavage  between  the 
two.  For  the  Nationalists  consider  themselves  the 
progressive  section  of  Judaism,  and  to  them  the 
Orthodox  are  backward  and  obsolete  who  are  ridic¬ 
ulous  enough  to  consider  it  a  mortal  sin  to  write  a 
letter  on  Saturday  morning  or  to  eat  a  lobster.  But 
the  Nationalists  gain  ground  steadily.  The  services 
in  their  synagogues  have  been  “reformed”  into 
being  very  like  services  in  Protestant  churches. 
Their  Rabbis  are  very  highly  educated  men,  resem¬ 
bling  German  parsons.  There  is  the  same  difference 
between  an  Orthodox  Rabbi — who  looks  like  a 
Rabbi  in  Rembrandt’s  etchings — and  a  “reformed” 
Rabbi  as  there  is  between  a  devout  Neapolitan 
Monk  and  a  philosophical  Unitarian  minister. 

West  Jews  play  a  familiar  part  in  the  economic 
life  of  the  West,  nearly  always  as  men  of  affairs,  and 
almost  exclusively  as  town  dwellers. 

But  in  Poland  till  within  the  last  generation  all 
business  men  were  Jews;  the  Poles  were  peasants 
or  landowners,  and  left  commerce  to  the  Jews;  even 
now  certainly  much  more  than  half,  and  perhaps 
as  much  as  three-quarters,  of  business  men  are 
Jews;  in  big  towns  (and  I  take,  not  statistics,  but 
the  evidence  most  obvious  to  the  eye)  the  shops  at 


35 


times  seem  to  be  all  Jewish.  Warsaw,  the  capital 
of  Poland,  is  nearly  half  Jewish.  In  small  towns 
the  preponderance  is  still  greater,  and  in  most 
towns,  big  or  small,  the  East  Jew  is  not  only  the 
prosperous  business  man,  he  is  the  slum  dweller, 
living  in  unimaginable  squalor  and  poverty,  and 
occupying  almost  all  the  slums.  This  is  far  from 
true  of  West  Jews. 

Again,  there  is  a  still  greater  difference. 
Poland  is  an  agricultural  country,  but  the 
East  Jews,  unlike  the  West  Jews,  play  a  large 
part  in  its  country  life.  Every  estate  and 
every  village  has  its  Jew,  who  holds  a  sort 
of  hereditary  position  in  them ;  he  markets 
the  produce  of  the  peasants  and  makes  their 
purchases  for  them  in  towns;  every  Polish 
landowner  or  noble  had  his  own  Jew,  who 
did  all  his  business  for  him,  managed  the  com¬ 
mercial  part  of  his  estate  and  found  him 
money.  Till  modern  times  it  was  actual  law, 
and  in  modern  times  a  rigorous  etiquette, 
that  no  Polish  noble,  small  or  great,  might 
buy  and  sell.  Even  if  he  wanted  to  buy  a 
horse  from  a  friend,  he  sent  his  Jews  to  do 
it.  Besides  this,  nearly  all  the  population 
of  nearly  all  the  small  country  towns  is 
Jewish,  corn  and  leather  dealers,  storekeepers 
and  pedlars  and  such  like.  They  are  very  like 
— and  exposed  to  the  same  odium  as — the 
Irish  Gombeen  man,  the  village  storekeeper 
who  exploited,  or  was  supposed  to  exploit,  the 
Irish  peasant. 

These  small  middlemen  play  a  large  part 
in  a  country  like  Poland,  whose  economic  life 
has  been  artificially  stunted  by  conquerors. 
This  is  the  sort  of  thing  that  happens,  and  I 
quote  it  as  an  example  to  show  the  nature  of 
their  activities.  On  market  days  these  Jews 
haunt  the  roads  leading  to  the  market  and 
buy  their  produce,  a  goose  or  a  load  of  vege¬ 
tables,  from  peasants  and  resell  it  again.  This 
sort  of  business  and  nothing  else  is  their  only 
livelihood ;  they  are  capitalists  trading  with 
a  capital  of  a  few  shillings.  And  this  class  is 
as  common  in  big  towns  as  in  the  country. 

For  both  town  and  country  I  think  it  a  true 
generalisation  to  say  that  the  East  Jews  are 
hardly  ever  producers,  but  nearly  always  mid¬ 
dlemen.  In  Lemberg,  with  a  population  of 
nearly  60,000  Jews,  three-quarters  of  these 
are  small  shopkeepers,  hawkers,  pedlars,  or 
engaged  in  any  chance  job  they  can  get  as 
intermediaries.  Only  25  per  cent,  are  artisans 
or  prosperous  business  men.  There  are,  of 
course,  in  such  millions  of  people,  consider¬ 
able  exceptions :  Galician  woodcutters ;  in 
certain  places  factory  workers,  though  their 
strict  Sabbath  rules  and  the  dislike  of  the 
Polish  workmen  keep  them  away  from  fac¬ 
tories  ;  artisans,  too,  in  cheap  furniture, 
clothes  and  leather,  but  inferior  in  skill  to 
the  Poles ;  and  in  other  trades,  too,  but  al¬ 
ways  tending  to  unskilled  labour.  But  the 


generalisation  is  generally  true.  The  Lem¬ 
berg  figures  perhaps  give  the  right  average 
in  towns ;  in  the  country  the  average  would  be 
even  higher. 

It  is  instructive  to  try  and  imagine  what 
England  would  be  like  under  the  same  condi¬ 
tions.  Arriving  in  London,  a  stranger  would 
find  every  second  or  third  person  a  Jew,  al¬ 
most  all  the  poorer  quarters  and  slums  Jew¬ 
ish,  and  thousands  of  synagogues.  Arriving 
at  Newbury  he  would  find  practically  the 
whole  town  Jewish,  and  nearly  every  printed 
inscription  in  Hebrew  characters.  Pene¬ 
trating  into  Berkshire,  he  would  find  the  only 
storekeeper  in  most  small  villages  a  Jew,  and 
small  market  towns  mostly  composed  of 
Jewish  hovels.  Going  on  to  Birmingham, 
he  would  find  all  the  factories  owned  by  Jews, 
and  two  shops  out  of  three  with  Jewish 
names.  He  would  find  at  least  half  these 
Jews  almost  as  different  from  an  Englishman 
as  an  Arab,  even  in  their  dress  and  the  cut 
of  their  hair,  and  speaking  among  themselves, 
not  only  the  dialect  of  a  foreign  tongue,  but 
that  foreign  tongue  itself  the  language  of  an 
enemy.  This  is  the  picture  the  Jewry  of  the 
East  Jews  presents,  and  anti-Semitic  dis¬ 
sensions  are  therefore  very  different  in  Po¬ 
land  to  what  they  are  in  Western  Europe. 
The  most  resonant  anti-Semitic  dispute  of  the 
last  generation  was  the  Dreyfus  case.  But 
the  small  Polish  town  of  Cracow  itself  con¬ 
tains  half  as  many  Jews  as  in  the  whole  of 
France  put  together.  If  the  Jews  in  France 
had  been  so  large  in  number,  as  different  in 
character,  and  as  peculiar  in  position  as  they 
are  in  Poland,  that  famous  controversy  would 
have  taken  a  very  different  shape. 

History  of  the  Jews  in  Poland 

A  great  quarrel  has  arisen  in  the  present  genera¬ 
tion  between  Jews  and  Poles,  each  in  their  millions, 
and,  in  trying  to  understand  their  present  rela¬ 
tions,  which  are  very  bad,  I  was  compelled  to 
try  and  understand  their  past  relations  which 
had  been  very  much  better,  if  not  excellent. 
Without,  perhaps,  the  opportunity  or  the  qualifica¬ 
tions  to  do  so,  I  was  thus  driven  to  study  the  past, 
even  at  the  risk  of  presenting  both  the  opposite 
faults  of  pedantry  and  ignorance,  and  all  the  more 
so  that  each  side  seemed  to  me  to  be  using  against 
the  other  historical  arguments  that  were  equally, 
though  differently,  fallacious. 

History  may  be  an  academic  pursuit,  but  it  ceases 
to  be  so  where  it  is  used  to  justify  very  practical 
measures.  The  anti-Semitic  party  in  Poland  pro¬ 
poses  to  expel  the  Jews  because  they  are  strangers 
uninvited  to  Poland,  who  have  grown  stronger  by 
Poland’s  weaknesses,  and  are  now  too  numerous 
for  its  safety.  The  Nationalist  Jews  want  Home 
Rule  in  Poland  for  the  Jews  because  they  form  a 
separate  nation,  whom  long  oppression  has  pre¬ 
vented  from  asserting  itself,  but  which  now  intends 


36 


to  come  to  its  own.  But  I  venture  to  say  that  these 
theories  are  common  examples  of  history  being  de¬ 
graded  into  the  handmaiden  of  politics  by  men  who 
care  very  little  about  the  past,  and  very  much  about 
the  present. 

It  could  not  be,  and  is  not  fortuitous,  that  till  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  Jews  in  all 
parts  of  the  world,  from  China  to  Abyssinia,  should 
exist  only  in  clusters,  and  in  such  great  masses  in 
the  region  between  the  Baltic  and  the  Black  Sea, 
where  nine-tenths  of  the  Jews  in  the  world  were 
to  be  found.  Polish  Jewry  was,  in  effect,  Jewry 
till  then. 

In  the  eighth  and  ninth  centuries  there  was  a 
great  kingdom  of  Tartars  to  the  north  o^  the  Black 
Sea — called  the  Chazars — of  which  a  large,  and  that 
the  upper  portion,  were  converted  to  Judaism.  Tar¬ 
tars  are  still  the  only  people  who  show  any  inclina¬ 
tion  for  conversion  to  Orthodox  Judaism,  and  the 
Russian  Church  had  to  take  special  measures  to  pre¬ 
vent  these  changes.7  The  chazars  were  broken  by 
the  Slavs  after  two  centuries  and  driven  westwards 
But  they  survive  in  a  Jewish  sect,  who  were  recog¬ 
nised  as  such  by  the  Russian  Government,  and  ex¬ 
cepted  from  their  measures  of  persecution — the 
Charaites — who  still  celebrate  their  synagogue  ser¬ 
vice  in  Tartar.  Obscure  as  these  origins  are,  there 
is  no  doubt,  from  the  evidence  of  coins,  that  Jewish 
communities  existed  in  Poland  before  either  St. 
Cyril  brought  Byzantine  or  St.  Adalbert  Latin  civi¬ 
lisation  to  the  Slavs  by  converting  them  to  Chris¬ 
tianity. 

This  was  the  Jewish  stream  from  the  East. 
Another  came  from  the  West,  when  Western  Chris¬ 
tendom,  during  that  long  offensive  against  Islam 
and  heathendom  known  as  the  Crusades,  expelled 
the  Jews  who  seemed  to  represent  the  very  forces 
they  were  atttacking,  those  from  the  Rhine,  where 
the  earliest  and  thickest  settlements  of  these  wan¬ 
dering  Semitic  merchants  existed,  joined  their  co-re¬ 
ligionists  further  east  and  these  adopted  the  Ger¬ 
man  language,  Judisch  or  Yiddish,  of  the  new¬ 
comers.  Both  streams  had  mixed  largely  with  the 
Teutonic  and  Slav  races. 

Therefore  the  Jews  in  Poland  have  been  settled 
there  between  800  and  1,000  years.  Except  for  the 
purpose  of  proving  a  point,  they  cannot  be  called 
strangers  there,  nor  can  the  Slavs  be  considered 
very  much  more  native  than  they. 

From  the  documents  of  the  thirteenth  century,8 
which  do  not  create  new  but  register  existing  con¬ 
ditions,  they  are  seen  at  their  first  real  appearance 
as  a  semi-autonomous  corporation  or  community, 
for  which  it  is  hard  to  find  a  name  in  English,  for 
the  thing  itself  has  never  existed  in  England,  where 
the  State,  in  the  shape  of  the  Crown,  so  early 
crushed  out  all  independent  political  organisations, 
and  gathered  all  public  power  to  itself.  But,  of 
course,  such  bodies  are  common  all  over  central 
Europe,  and  the  Jewish  community  had  the  same 
sort  of  independence  as,  for  example,  the  free  city 
of  Hamburg.  Their  position  was  exactly  the  oppo¬ 
site  of  the  English  Jews,  who  were  a  mere  sponge 


in  the  hands  of  our  kings  to  be  squeezed  for  money 
whenever  the  sponge  was  full.  At  their  very  earliest 
appearance  they  are  seen  grouped  around  their 
synagogues  and  rabbis,  who  exercise  civil  and  re¬ 
ligious  authority,  with  a  personal  law  of  their  own, 
independent  courts  of  their  own,  complete  freedom 
to  travel  and  special  protection  in  so  doing,  and 
only  a  nominal  dependence  on  the  king.  Even  in 
the  twelfth  century  they  are  evidently  an  indepen¬ 
dent  political  organism  in  mediaeval  Poland,  and  as 
Poland  remained  mediaeval  till  it  perished,  and  in¬ 
deed  perished  just  because  it  remained  mediaeval, 
next  to  neighbours  who  were  not,  so  the  mediaeval 
organisation  of  the  Jews  lasted  to  the  end.  The 
Jews  were  ruled  by  their  commissioners  (waadim), 
and  the  Polish  kings  dealt  only  with  those  com¬ 
missioners  and  not  directly  with  the  individual  Jews. 
Owing  to  a  very  uncritical  view  of  the  document 
known  as  the  Privilege  of  Casimir  the  Great,  which 
is  a  Magna  Charta  of  the  Jews,  it  is  a  favourite  Po¬ 
lish  view  that  the  Jews  were  admitted  to  Poland 
by  the  mistaken  generosity  of  the  Polish  kings  and 
the  tolerance  of  the  generous  people.  This  is  very 
like  saying  that  the  Dukedom  of  Bavaria  grew  by 
the  generosity  of  the  German  emperors  and  the  tol¬ 
erance  of  the  German  people.  These  smaller  political 
organisms  grew  with  the  greater  organism  that  con¬ 
tained  them  and  in  mediaeval  life  were  neither 
junior  in  origin  nor  subordinate  in  right. 

In  its  desperate  efforts  to  centralise  and  unify 
itself  so  as  to  resist  its  powerfully  centralised  neigh¬ 
bors  in  the  eighteenth  century,  this  independence 
was  suppressed  for  a  few  years  before  the  Russian 
flood  engulfed  both  Jews  and  Poles.  But  the  Prus¬ 
sian  administrators  found  in  1732  this  whole  med¬ 
iaeval  system  still  working  when  they  took  posses¬ 
sion  after  the  Partition. 

Economically,  the  Jews  appear  at  the  very 
outset  as  dealers  not  as  producers,  nor  even 
as  artisans,  and  chiefly  dealers  in  money;  in 
course  of  time  the  whole  business  and  com¬ 
merce  of  Poland  became  theirs,  and  they  did 
nothing  else.  The  Poles  were  knights  and 
ploughmen  who  fought  and  tilled,  and  the 
merchants  were  Jews,  and  this  monopoly 
lasted  till  the  present  generation.  The  Jews 
grew  steadily  in  number  because  their  stan¬ 
dard  of  living  was,  and  is,  much  lower  than 
that  of  the  Poles ;  even  now  the  Chassidim, 
very  often  also  those  of  considerable  means, 
live  in  the  poorest  way  and  multiply  as  rapid¬ 
ly  as  a  people  with  a  lower  standard  always 
do. 

Socially  they  are,  in  Polish  history,  a  despised 
caste,  exercising  a  despised  occupation,  trade.  There 
was  also  the  closest  alliance  between  them  and  the 
innumerable  nobility,  great  and  small,  who  ruled 
Poland  till  the  end.  “Every  noble  has  his  Jew” 
was  the  Polish  saying,  and  if  he  did  spit  in  the  face 
of  his  Jew  when  drunk,  the  Jew  did  all  the  business. 
This  position  of  hereditary  “body  Jew”  as  estate 
business  manager  of  every  Polish  landowner  lasted 
till  the  present  generation.  I  am  informed  that  in 


37 


Polish  literature  the  Jew  appears  as  part  of  the 
Polish  people,  a  very  inferior  branch  of  it,  it  is  true, 
but  still  as  part  of  it. 

Mediaeval  men,  seeing  this  independence,  this  pros¬ 
perity,  and  these  numbers,  called  Poland  the  Paradise 
of  the-Jews. 

It  is  an  explanation  often  given  of  what  may  be 
called  according  to  the  point  of  view,  the  idiosyncra¬ 
sies  or  defects  of  the  Jews,  that  they  have  been  an 
oppressed  and  persecuted  people.  This  is  an  idea  so 
charitable  and  humane  that  I  should  like  to  think  it, 
not  only  of  the  Jews,  but  of  every  other  people.  It 
has  every  merit  as  a  theory  except  that  of  being  true. 
When  one  thinks  of  what  happened  to  the  other  “ra¬ 
cial,  religious,  and  linguistic  minorities”  of  Europe  in 
modem  times,  say,  the  French  Protestants  or  the  Irish 
Catholics,  to  take  the  first  of  numberless  examples  that 
come  to  hand,  the  Jew  appears  not  as  the  most  perse¬ 
cuted,  but  as  the  most  favoured,  people  of  Europe. 
This  mediaeval  autonomy,  enduring  as  it  did  through 
modern  times  because  it  happened  to  be  placed  in  a 
country  that  always  remained  mediaeval,  was  the  shell 
within  which  the  Orthodox  Jews  (and  all  Jews  were 
Orthodox  till  the  nineteenth  century)  preserved  their 
ancient  and  peculiar  civilisation  untouched  by  the  flow 
and  change  of  the  world  until  the  nineteenth  century. 
And  this  is  why  they  are  so  different,  even  now,  to 
the  Poles.  And  this  is  why  it  is  so  difficult  for  Poles 
and  Jews  to  agree  and  become  one  people  now.  It  is 
not  the  bad  luck  of  the  Jews  that  has  prevented  them 
“developing,”  as  they  call  it ;  it  is  their  singular  good 
fortune  in  the  past  because  they  never  had,  to  return 
to  my  two  chance  examples,  any  St.  Bartholomews, 
Repeals  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  Captures  of  Drogheda, 
or  Irish  Penal  Laws. 

Even  at  present,  in  the  twentieth  century,  the  re¬ 
moteness  of  the  life  of  the  Orthodox  Jews  from  Eu¬ 
ropean  life  and  their  separateness  struck  me  again 
and  again  in  the  evidence  that  came  before  the  Com¬ 
mission.  I  will  give  one  of  the  most  striking  examples. 

It  is  impossible  to  mix  with  Europeans  without  at 
least  knowing  their  calendar,  the  names  of  months, 
and  of  the  days  of  the  week,  or  to  mix  much  with 
Europeans  without  using  it  to  mark  dates.  Con¬ 
versely,  anyone  who  does  not,  and  cannot  use  this 
calendar  to  mark  dates,  and  is  hardly  aware  of  it, 
must  have  lived  apart  from  European  life. 

A  poor  but  worthy  Jewish  Rabbi  from  a  townlet 
in  very  desert  Eastern  territories  came  before  the  Com¬ 
mission  with  complaints.  On  cross-examining  him 
as  to  dates,  I  found  he  only  used,  and  only  knew,  the 
old  Semitic  calendar  of  the  Jews,  and  could  not  reckon 
time  in  any  other.  His  little  community  only  used, 
and  could  only  use,  the  Hebrew  months  and  year.  He 
knew  no  other. 

The  Jezvs  in  the  Nineteenth  Century 

The  partition  of  Poland  broke  into  and  broke  up 
this  curious  Jewish  life.  In  the  nineteenth  century  the 
original  mass  of  Orthodox  Jewry  threw  off  body  after 
body,  either  as  emigrants  who  constitute  most  of  the 
West  Jews  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  or  the  East 
Jews,  whom  I  have  called  for  convenience  National¬ 


ists  or  Zionists.  These  new  bodies  took  to  living, 
feeling,  and  thinking  as  Europeans.  (Though,  of 
course,  the  foundation  of  the  anti-Semitic  view  is  that 
they  never  can ;  and  that  under  the  Jew  you  always 
find  the  Oriental.)  This  change  shows  itself  at  once 
in  many  ways.  For  example,  in  the  part  played  (for 
good  or  for  bad)  in  every  sphere  of  life  in  the  last 
century,  where  before  that  time  Jews  had  never  been 
heard  of.  Again,  the  Hebrew  language  then  began 
to  reflect  the  change ;  before  that  it  had  been  used  for 
merely  religious  purposes,  controversies  on  Torah  and 
Talmud  as  to  how  many  brazen  lavers  there  were  in 
Solomon’s  Temple,  or  whether  the  fat  in  an  animal’s 
tail  is  Kosher  or  not.  But  from  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  it  began  to  be  used  for  every  pur¬ 
pose,  literary  or  scientific.  Again,  a  religious  change 
also  set  in ;  synagogue  services  began  to  be  “reformed,” 
that  is,  assimilated  to  Christian  services,  till,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  Jewish  Rabbis  in  England  dress  like  Anglican 
clergymen  and,  with  a  singular  want  of  humour,  even 
cease  to  be  called  Rabbis,  but  call  themselves  chap¬ 
lains. 

Political  ideas  also  changed,  or  rather  political  ideas 
entered  the  heads  of  Jews  for  the  first  time.  For 
even  now  Orthodox  Jews  care  little  for  political  ques¬ 
tions  ;  not  much  as  to  who  rules  them,  nor  very  much 
how  they  are  ruled,  so  long  as  their  religious  practices 
are  untouched.  It  was  less  with  complaints  about 
pogroms  and  excesses  that  the  Orthodox  leaders  came 
before  the  Commission  than  with  complaints  about 
Sunday  closing,  which  discourages  a  strict  observance 
of  the  Sabbath. 

But  the  strongest  political  idea  of  any,  so 
strong  that  it  seems  natural,  nationality,  and  its 
corollaries,  like  patriotism,  take  a  different  form 
in  East  and  West  Jews.  If  an  English  Jew 
is  asked  “Are  you  an  Englishman?”  he  answers 
“Yes”;  Judaism  is  to  him  a  religion  only.  If 
a  Polish  Jew  (or  almost  any  Polish  Jew)  is 
asked  “Are  you  a  Pole?”  he  answers  “No;  I 
am  of  Jewish  nationality.”  So  it  is  that  the 
anti-Semitic  disputes  in  Eastern  Europe  are  the 
reverse  of  those  in  Western  Europe.  For  ex¬ 
ample,  Dreyfus  was  an  officer  who  said  he  was 
as  French  as  any  Frenchman  (it  was  his  op¬ 
ponents  who  denied  he  ever  could  be).  At 
present  the  Polish  Government  says  it  will  ad¬ 
mit  Jews  as  field  officers  if  they  will  sign  a 
declaration  that  they  are  of  Polish  nationality. 
This  they  refuse  to  do. 

Various  causes  have  contributed  to  make  this 
difference,  which  is  fundamental  and  deserv¬ 
ing  of  the  fullest  analysis.  French,  English, 
and  American  Jews  are,  or  protest  they  are, 
French,  English,  or  American  (100  per  cent. 
American,  as  they  say).  Polish  Jews  protest 
they  are  not  Poles ;  they  are  only  Jews,  but 
Polish  subjects. 

This  is  not  only  a  legal  point ;  the  legal  attitude  ex¬ 
presses  the  real  attitude.  I  am  not  sure  whether  I 
have  been  able  entirely  to  understand  why  the  evolu¬ 
tion  of  these  Europeanised  Jews  has  been  different  in 
East  and  West,  but  some  of  the  causes  are  apparent. 


38 


The  East  Jews  have  more  cohesion,  both  from 
within  and  without.  They  are  more  numerous  and 
more  difficult  to  transform.  Even  where  West  Jews 
form  a  mass,  as  in  New  York,  they  have  come  in 
gradually,  and  been  more  fully  influenced.  Because 
East  Jews  are  more  numerous,  they  are  more  pious, 
and  therefore  more  different;  no  man  who  has  to 
earn  his  living,  least  of  all  a  poor  emigrant,  can  keep 
Jewish  ritual  rules,  Sabbath  and  Kosher,  or  wear  the 
orthodox  dress  unless  others  do.  From  without,  Pol¬ 
ish  society  (in  the  wide,  not  the  narrow  sense)  is  more 
exclusive  because  it  has  century-old  traditions  of  ex¬ 
clusion.  The  Jews  to  them  are  still  what  the  native 
is  to  the  Anglo-Indian.  Western  European  societies, 
who  have  only  known  the  Jews  in  any  considerable 
number  for  about  a  century,  have  not,  or  only  again 
in  a  relatively  slight  degree.  If  the  upper  half  of  the 
Eastern  Jews  is  European,  the  lower  half,  the  Chassi¬ 
dim,  is  not,  and  this  lower  half  haunts  the  upper 
half,  and  by  the  Poles  the  two  halves  are  naturally 
identified.  West  Jews  do  not  drag  this  terrific  tail 
after  them.  No  West  Jew  I  have  ever  met  is  like 
the  Orthodox  East  Jew,  or  even  has  any  idea  that  such 
people  exist otherwise,  they  would  be  less  surprised 
at  the  prejudice  of  the  Poles. 

Besides  these  particular,  there  are  more  general,  pro¬ 
founder  causes.  When  orientals  in  a  mass,  both  dis¬ 
tinct  and  coherent,  get  European  ideas,  such  as  nation¬ 
ality,  patriotism,  social  equality,  liberty,  and  self-gov¬ 
ernment,  they  begin  to  think  they  are  a  nation  to 
whom  their  patriotism  is  due,  and  conversely  that  it 
is  not  due  to  the  Europeans  from  whom  they  ob¬ 
tained  their  ideas ;  that  they  are  equal  to  these  Euro¬ 
peans,  and  that  being  treated  as  an  inferior  caste  is 
unjust;  that  if  they  have  the  right  to  be  free  and 
govern  themselves,  then  they  will  not  be  governed  by 
men  who  are  not  of  their  race,  language,  and  religion. 
So  the  very  ideas  benevolently  sown  by  Europeans 
spring  up  again  in  a  hostile,  armed,  and  formidable 
shape.  More  and  more  during  the  nineteenth  century 
the  Jews  had  become  not  only  a  separate  body,  as 
in  the  previous  ages,  but  a  body  politically  claiming 
an  independence  as  much  as  the  Poles,  and  socially 
complete  equality.  Finally,  during  the  last  few  years, 
these  feelings  crystallised  into  the  formation  of  the 
Nationalist  or  Zionist  party,  which  is  the  strongest 
party  among  the  Europeanised  Jews,  all  of  whom,  for 
convenience,  I  have  called  Nationalists.  They  want 
Home  Rule,  independence  in  Poland,  and  a  national 
home  in  Palestine. 

Our  Eastern  empire  offers  the  clearest  analogies.  It 
is  not  fortuitous  that  the  very  same  word  “National¬ 
ists”  is  adopted  both  in  India  and  Egypt  by  orientals 
who  want  self-government  or  independence  from  us. 
There  also  it  is  those  members  of  Eastern  races  who 
have  been  Europeanised  who  get  European  ideas, 
equality  of  man,  self-government,  and,  deeper  still, 
patriotism  and  love  of  country,  and  their  converse, 
the  desire  of  independence  from  the  foreigner.  The 
very  ideas  that  Europeans  disseminate  to  any  oriental 
people  may  turn  against  them,  and  a  partially-Angli- 
cised  Egypt  rises  against  the  rulers  its  oriental  fathers 
welcomed.  So  it  is  with  the  Polish  Jews. 

It  is  sometimes  said  assimilation  will  cure 


this  Polish-Jewish  quarrel.  Full  assimilation 
will,  in  the  sense  of  the  assimilated  Jews,  a  very 
small  number  who  are  completely  Polish,  and 
hardly  Jewish,  even  in  religion ;  but  what  may 
be  called  the  semi-assimilation  of  the  larger 
masses  of  East  Jews  is  the  very  cause  of  the 
evil.  When  the  Orthodox  Jew  puts  aside  his 
black  cap  and  begins  to  wear  a  European  bowler 
on  the  top  of  his  head,  there  comes  inside  his 
head  new  European  ideas,  that  he  wants  a  coun¬ 
try  of  his  own,  made  of  men  of  his  own  race, 
religion,  and  language,  and  not  of  Poles ;  and 
that  he  will  not  be  treated  as  a  native,  an 
inferior  race.  Why  should  he,  if  his  new  les¬ 
son  is  that  all  men  are  equal? 

But  the  Poles  are  more  unfortunate  than  we. 
There  is  no  abstract  European,  there  are  only 
particular  nations.  The  Nationalists  of  our 
Eastern  Empire  are  at  least  only  Anglicised : 
Sir  Rabindranath  Tagore  denounces  English 
culture  only  in  the  most  exquisite  English;  the 
very  act  of  repudiation  is  a  homage  to  what 
he  repudiates.  But  Jews  in  Poland  have  not 
only  been  Polonised,  they  have  been  Russified 
and  Germanised.  So  that  the  Jews  appear  to 
the  Poles  as  the  representatives  of  their  op¬ 
pressors. 

For  education  is,  of  course,  the  easiest  road 
to  European  civilisation,  and  it  is  a  road  that 
the  Jews  follow  with  a  passionate  eagerness. 
For  even  at  the  lowest  level,  even  the  Orthodox 
are  educated ;  otherwise  they  cannot  be  Ortho¬ 
dox,  the  ideal  of  piety  being,  not  an  ideal  of 
conduct,  as,  for  example,  asceticism,  but  an 
ideal  of  erudition,  knowledge  of  Torah  and  Tal¬ 
mud.  They  are  the  people  of  the  Book.  All 
Jews  can,  and  must,  read  and  write  and  have 
been  an  educated  people  (though  educated,  per¬ 
haps,  in  what  was  not  worth  knowing)  for 
scores  of  centuries.  A  very  large  percentage  of 
Poles  is  illiterate.  The  neat,  pretty  house  of  the 
Polish  farmer  is  bookless ;  the  village  Jew  lives 
in  barbarous  filth,  but  he  has  his  Hebrew  books 
to  read  as  much  as  he  can,  and  the  Chassidim 
saint  is  the  man  who  pores  over  them  all  day 
while  his  wife  attends  to  the  shop.  When  the 
Jew  is  Europeanised  he  transfers  the  allegiance 
he  had  to  Torah  and  Talmud  over  to  educa¬ 
tional  text  books  and  becomes  the  fanatic  of 
education.  This  paradox,  that  while  an  infe¬ 
rior  culture  (I  deprecate  all  intention  of  of¬ 
fence),  they  are  an  educated  people,  explains : — 

Firstly,  why  Jews  were  largely  Russianised. 
In  Russian  Poland  Russian  was  taught  in 
schools,  not  Polish.  Even  when  a  Jew  went  to 
a  Polish  school  he  only  learnt  Russian.  There 
are  many  Jews  in  Poland  who  know  three  lan¬ 
guages,  Hebrew*,  Yiddish  and  Russian,  but 
no  Polish. 

Secondly,  why  the  Jews,  especially  the  wealth¬ 
ier,  are  still  more  Germanised.  Russian  Poland 
had  an  inefficient  and  defective  educational  sys¬ 
tem.  Tsarism  being  opposed  to  all  education, 
especially  to  that  of  Jews.  Germany,  next  door, 


39 


offered  the  Jews,  if  not  the  best  system  in  the 
world,  the  best  at  the  price.  As  Yiddish  is  a 
German  jargon,  it  was  easy  to  take  advantage 
of  it,  and  all  Jews  who  could  afford  it  have 
sent  their  children  there  for  the  last  century. 
The  result  is  that  the  East  Jews  are  the  most 
Germanised — though  not  pro-German — society 
I  have  ever  met  outside  Germany,  and  the  Poles 
say  “Once  a  Jew,  always  a  German.” 

Thirdly,  why  the  Jews  play  so  large  a  part 
in  Bolshevism.  Bolshevism  requires  a  vast  ad¬ 
ministration,  and  propaganda,  which  in  turn  re¬ 
quire  that  men  shall  at  least  be  able  to  read  and 
write.  But  in  the  proletariat  of  Eastern  Europe 
only  the  Jews  possess  these  accomplishments, 
and  therefore  the  administrators  and  propa¬ 
gandists  of  Bolshevism  must  necessarily  be 
Jews.  So  much  so  that  Bolshevism  appears 
at  times  to  be  almost  purely  a  Jewish  move¬ 
ment.  But  the  Commission  had  the  oppor¬ 
tunity  of  studying  it  very  close  at  hand  on 
the  Eastern  frontier,  and  in  that  part  of  the 
world  at  least  this  was  certainly  not  the  case. 

The  Nationalist  movement,  though  the  full  and  con¬ 
scious  expression  of  this  movement  as  a  party  pro¬ 
gramme  is  quite  late,  is  one  great  root  of  the  dispute 
between  the  Jews  and  the  Poles.  The  other  great 
root  was  that  not  only  have  the  Jews  grown  modern 
in  the  nineteenth  century,  but  the  Poles  have  too. 
Their  social  life  was  once  as  mediseval  as  their  political 
life.  Just  as  their  ancestors  had  been  knights  and 
ploughmen,  they  remained  landed  proprietors  and 
peasants.  But  towards  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  cen¬ 
tury— especially  in  Russian  and  Prussian  Poland, 
where  they  were  excluded  from  all  offices — they  took 
to  business  and  began  to  trench  upon  the  Jewish  mo¬ 
nopoly.  This  is  the  other  great  root  of  the  dispute. 
This  struck  the  Jews  upon  their  sensitive  nerve,  their 
love  of  money  aggravated  by  centuries  of  exclusive 
enjoyment,  just  as  the  Jewish  Nationalist  movement 
struck  the  Poles  upon  their  sensitive  nerve,  national 
and  racial  pride,  exasperated  by  a  century  of  oppres¬ 
sion.  This  economic  change  was  fiercely  resented  by 
the  Jews,  and  very  often  by  criminal  means  such  as 
arson.  The  co-operative  Polish  societies  in  the  coun¬ 
try  which  displaced  the  local  Jewish  dealers  were  often 
attacked;  one  of  the  Jewish  Nationalist  leaders  bit¬ 
terly  denounced  the  Poles  to  the  Commission,  because, 
as  he  said,  a  generation  ago  the  Poles  had  none  of  the 
business  of  their  own  country,  but  now  they  had  at 
least  twenty  per  cent.  So  much  does  the  past  rule  the 
present;  Jews  and  Poles,  modern  though  they  may  be, 
consider  their  old  privileges  as  natural  rights.  The  Jew 
claims  a  right  to  all  the  profits,  and  the  Pole  to  kick 
the  Jew  whenever  he  feels  the  inclination. 

The  Feud  Between  the  Jews  and  the  Poles 

Though  the  Tsarist  policy,  in  Poland  as  elsewhere, 
was  to  set  one  race  against  another,  during  the  nine¬ 
teenth  century  their  relations  were  not  strained,  and 
the  Jews  fought  with  the  Poles  in  the  last  insurrec¬ 
tion  of  1863.  It  was  only  twenty  years  ago  that  the 
quarrel  began  and  the  excesses  brought  to  the  notice 


of  the  Commission  flow  from  this  quarrel.  As  soon  as 
the  two  races  were  released  from  the  pressure  of  a 
foreign  conqueror  at  the  Armistice  the  Poles  flew  at 
the  Jews. 

The  Tsarist  Government  drove  the  Jews  out 
of  Russia  and  tried  to  make  “one  great  ghetto 
of  Poland.”  The  Russian  Jews  were  particu¬ 
larly  rich,  “the  Litwaki”  as  they  are  called,  and 
much  more  enterprising  and  intelligent  than  the 
Polish  Jews.  The  Tsarist  Government  in  pur¬ 
suance  of  its  invariable  policy,  favoured  the 
same  Jews  in  Poland  whom  it  persecuted  in 
Russia.  For  example,  Jews  were  forbidden  to 
own  rural  land  in  Russia;  but  in  Poland,  the 
Russian  banks  lent  them  money  on  extrav¬ 
agantly  favourable  terms  so  that  real  estate  in 
Warsaw  is  largely  Jewish.  The  Litwaki  openly 
professed  themselves  the  partisans  of  conquer¬ 
ing  Russia  deliberately  talked  Russian,  and  still 
do  to  Poles,  most  offensively  I  thought;  and 
organised  the  Polish  Jews — who  at  first  were 
adverse  to  them — as  a  separate  body.  The 
beginning  of  the  movement  is  clearly  marked 
by  the  foundation  of  the  Jewish  press,  for  a 
new  press  means  a  new  point  of  view.  This 
press  set  to  work  openly  to  fight  against  Polish 
autonomy. 

It  is  easy  enough — after  the  event — to  blame  the 
Jews  for  being  on  the  Russian  side.  But  why  should 
they  not  have  been?  The  Polish  Jews  are  not  Poles; 
they  are  Jews.  The  Peace  Conference  may  make  them 
Poles  in  1919;  but  the  Congress  of  Vienna  in  1815 
made  them  Russians.  It  is  a  pity  they  cannot  always 
switch  from  one  to  the  other  to  suit  the  decisions  of 
statesmen,  and  after  being  good  Russians  for  the 
nineteenth,  become  good  Poles  for  the  twentieth  cen¬ 
tury,  but  it  is  excusable. 

The  attachment  of  a  great  number  of  Jews  in 
Poland  to  Russia  is  sincere,  no  less  than  the  attach¬ 
ment  of  many  to  the  soil  of  Poland,  where  they  can 
trace  their  descent  for  centuries.  But  Russia  is  the 
promised  land  for  most  Jews;  their  material  home 
as  much  as  Germany  is  their  spiritual  home.  It  is  a 
rich  land  where  wealth  can  be  reaped  in  sheaves 
without  a  struggle,  instead  of  a  poor  land  like  Poland 
where  it  can  only  be  gleaned  with  difficulty.  It  is  a 
land  where  the  Government  may  be  hostile,  but  the 
people  are  not  unfriendly.  If  Russia  is  opened  to 
the  Jews,  the  Polish  Jewish  question  may  solve  itself ; 
the  Jews  who  were  pumped  into  Poland  by  the  Tsarist 
Government  will  stream  back  there  and  now  sweep 
along  with  them  very  many  of  the  Polish  Jews. 

The  Poles  answered  this  Russian  movement  by  the 
anti-Semitic  movement,  orgianisied  by  Mr.  Roman 
Dmowski.  The  Polish  press  became  anti-Semitic  and 
attacked  the  Jews,  and  has  continued  to  do  so  with 
incredible  violence.  The  worst  anti-Semitic  agitation, 
say,  for  example,  a  section  of  the  French  press  during 
the  Dreyfus  case,  is  a  breath  next  to  this  storm, 
which  blows  and  rages  unintermittently  and  ex¬ 
presses  as  much  as  it  excites  the  hatred  of  the  Poles. 
All  evil,  from  the  loss  of  Danzig  to  the  large  blue 
flies  in  the  butchers’s  shops,  comes  from  Jews,  and 


40 


all  Jews  are  evil,  usurers,  bloodsuckers,  corruptors, 
traitors,  swindlers,  liars,  profiteers,  ritual  murderers, 
blackmailers,  assassins  and  Bolsheviks.  Variations 
on  these  themes  crash  every  day  from  the  whole 
orchestra  of  the  Polish  press.  The  Commission  had 
some  experience  of  it  in  the  bucketful  of  abuse  that 
was  poured  on  Sir  Stuart  Samuel  as  a  Jew,  and  which 
he  received  with  perfect  equanimity. 

Meanwhile  the  separatism  of  the  Jews — not  the 
Orthodox,  who  have  never  cared  at  all  about  politics — 
took  shape  in  the  formation  of  the  Zionist  or  Nation¬ 
alist  Jewish  Party,  which  includes  the  majority  of 
the  Europeanised  Jews. 

At  present  the  doctrine  of  the  Zionists  or  Nation¬ 
alists  (the  names  are  interchangeable)  is  “We  Jews 
have  race,  religion  and  language  (though  which 
language.  Yiddish  or  Hebrew,  we  are  not  quite  sure) 
therefore  we  are  a  nation.  All  we  need  is  a  country. 
Our  country  is  Palestine  and  until  we  can  have  it  as 
a  national  home  we  want  to  be  organised  as  a  nation  in 
Poland.  Being  tolerant  and  up  to  date  Jews  can 
be  strict  or  lax,  as  they  please,  and,  unlike  the  Orth¬ 
odox,  we  cannot  think  it  a  sin  to  write  a  letter  on  the 
Sabbath  or  to  eat  lobster  at  lunch.”  Their  party 
programme  in  Poland  is  to  have  all  Jews  on  a  separate 
register.  The  Jews  thus  registered  are  to  elect  a 
representative  body  of  Jews,  with  extensive  powers  of 
legislation  and  taxation ;  e.g.,  it  could  tax  for  purposes 
of  emigration.  This  body  to  be  handed  over  by  the 
Polish  State,  a  proportionate  amount  of  money  to 
spend  on  Jewish  charitable  and  financial  institutions. 
Besides  this  separate  organisation,  a  number  of  seats 
proportionate  to  their  numbers  to  be  set  aside  in  every 
local  and  in  the  national  legislature.  A  sixth  or  a 
seventh  of  the  Polish  Diet  to  be  occupied  only  by  Jews 
to  be  elected  only  by  Jews.  Some  Jews  also  demand 
separate  law  courts,  or  at  least  the  right  to  use 
Yiddish  as  well  as  Polish  in  legal  proceedings.  This  is 
the  practical  programme,  but  the  ambitions  of  the 
advanced  section9  is  the  national  personal  autonomy 
granted  in  the  Ukraine  by  one  of  the  ephemeral 
governments  of  the  Ukraine,  the  Ukrainian  Central 
Rada,  on  9th  January,  1918,  and  called  the  Statute  of 
National  Personal  Autonomy,  of  which  I  have  a  copy. 
It  organises  the  Jews  as  a  nation  with  full  sovereign 
powers ;  the  Ukrainian  banknotes  were  printed  in 
Yiddish  as  well  as  in  Ukrainian. 

If  the  Jews  in  England — after  multiplying  their 
/lumbers  by  twenty  or  thirty — demanded  that  the 
Jewish  Board  of  Guardians  should  have  extensive 
powers,  including  the  right  to  tax  for  purposes  of 
emigration,  and  that  a  separate  number  of  seats  should 
be  set  aside  in  the  London  County  Council,  the  Man¬ 
chester  Town  Council,  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
the  House  of  Lords,  to  be  occupied  only  by  Jews 
chosen  by  Jews ;  that  the  President  of  the  Board  of 
Education  should  hand  over  yearly  to  the  Jews  sums 
proportionate  to  their  numbers ;  if  some  were  to 
demand  the  right  to  have  separate  Jewish  law  courts, 
or  at  least  to  be  allowed  to  use  Yiddish  as  well  as 
English  in  the  King’s  Bench  and  Chancery  Division; 
if  the  most  advanced  even  looked  forward  to  a  time 
when  Bank  of  England  notes  were  to  be  printed  in 
Yiddish  as  well  as  in  English,  then  they  might  well 


find  public  opinion,  even  in  England,  less  well  disposed 
to  them.  If  West  Jews  are  more  welcome  than  East 
Tews  in  the  countries  where  they  find  themselves, 
they  also  have  smaller  pretensions. 

In  1912  the  dispute  between  Poles  and  Jews,  assidu¬ 
ously  encouraged  by  the  Tsarist  authorities,  came  to 
an  issue  in  the  Duma  elections.  The  Warsaw  Jews, 
by  a  neat  but  perfectly  legitimate  manoeuvre,  got 
control  of  the  elections,  and,  with  sardonic  humor, 
returned  to  the  Duma  a  member  of  such  a  kind  that 
whenever  the  representative  of  the  capital  of  Poland 
got  on  his  feet  the  Duma  roared  with  laughter.  The 
exasperated  Poles  retorted  with  a  national  boycott  on 
business  with  the  Jews.  It  was  the  only  way  the 
Poles,  as  a  subject  race,  could  attack  another  subject 
race,  the  Jews.  The  Polish  co-operative  societies  in 
the  country  had  already  hit  the  Jewish  country  dealers 
hard;  another  motive  was  now  added  for  supporting 
and  extending  them.  In  town  every  effort — but  with 
little  success — was  made  to  put  Jewish  shops  and 
merchants  out  of  business.  For  example,  a  Jewish 
chemist  would  find  his  customers  hooted  by  small 
crowds  outside  his  shop,  or  his  customers  would  find 
that  small  notices  had  been  pinned  to  their  clothes  as 
friends  of  the  Jews.  His  wholesale  firm  would  tell 
him  that  Polish  physicians  had  written  threatening 
not  to  recommend  the  products  of  their  firm  if  they 
supplied  him  with  goods.  Polish  newspapers  published 
the  names  of  those  who  sold  land  to  Jews,  and  they 
were  ostracised.  A  sort  of  boycott  still  continues, 
and  undoubted  instances  were  laid  before  the  Com¬ 
mission.  But  now  the  Poles  are  in  power  they  have 
other  arms  to  attack  them  with,  and  therefore  rely 
less  or  little  on  the  boycott  as  it  was. 

But  the  high  day  and  triumph  of  the  Jews 
was  during  the  German  occupation.  The  Jews 
in  Poland  are  deeply  Germanised,  and  German 
carries  you  over  Poland  because  Jews  are  every¬ 
where.  So  the  Germans  found  everywhere 
people  who  knew  their  language  and  could 
work  for  them.  It  was  with  Jews  that  the 
Germans  set  up  their  organisation  to  squeeze 
and  drain  Poland — Poles  and  Jews  included — 
of  everything  it  had ;  it  was  in  concert  with 
Jews  that  German  officials  and  officers  towards 
the  end  carried  on  business  all  over  the  country. 
In  every  department  and  region  they  were  the 
instruments  of  the  Germans,  and  poor  Jews 
grew  rich  and  lordly  as  the  servants  of  the 
masters.  But  though  Germanised,  the  accusa¬ 
tions  of  the  Poles  that  the  Jews  are  devoted 
to  Germany  is  unfounded — just  as  unfounded 
as  the  charge,  so  often  made  in  the  English 
press  by  Poles,  that  all  the  troubles  between 
them  and  the  Jews  are  tricks  and  inventions  of 
the  Germans.  They  have  no  more  loyalty  to 
Germany — the  home  of  anti-Semitism — than  to 
Poland.  The  East  Jews  are  Jews  and  only 
Jews.  But  this  is  too  fine  a  distinction  for  the 
ordinary  Pole,  who  looks  on  all  Jews  as  the 
allies  of  his  worst  enemy —  “once  a  Jew,  always 
a  German.”  But  the  Jewish  political  leaders 
never  went  to  Berlin  to  pay  their  court  to  the 
Kaiser  like  so  many  Polish  party  leaders  and 


41 


grandees,  lay  and  clerical.  The  Jews,  and 
especially  those  to  whom  it  was  so  profitable, 
naturally  welcomed  the  arrival  of  the  Germans, 
and  at  the  Armistice  there  were  Jewish  demon¬ 
strations  in  favour  of  the  Germans  and  against 
the  “Polish  goose,”  as  they  termed  the  newly- 
arisen  Polish  White  Eagle.  The  very  day  the 
German  garrison  was  disarmed,  in  November 
1918,  the  excesses  against  the  Jews  began  all 
over  Warsaw ;  everywhere  assaults  on  them 
took  place. 

It  had  seemed  certain  that  one  of  two,  the 
German  or  the  Russian  Empire,  must  win,  and 
that  the  Jews,  who  had  their  money  on  both, 
were  safe ;  but  the  despised  Poland  came  in 
first.  Even  now  the  Jews  can  hardly  believe 
in  its  resurrection,  and  one  of  them  told  me 
it  still  seemed  to  him  a  dream. 

The  Excesses  of  the  Last  Year 

The  events  of  the  last  twenty  years  had 
brought  the  Poles  to  look  upon  the  Jews  as 
national  enemies,  with  an  abhorrence  almost 
as  furious  as  we  ever  looked  upon  the  Germans 
during  the  war.  In  November,  1918,  the  Poles 
became  independent  again,  but  independent 
without  a  government,  which  still  had  to  be 
created.  Given  a  hated  minority,  and  given 
an  absence  of  government,  could  it  be  other¬ 
wise  than  that  such  a  minority  should  suffer? 
The  Jews  have  suffered  very  very  much  dur¬ 
ing  the  last  year,  and  unfortunately  there  is  no 
exact  measure  of  suffering.  However,  I  esti¬ 
mate  that  not  more  than  200  or  300  have  been 
unjustly  killed.  One  would  be  too  many,  but, 
taking  these  casualties  as  a  standard  with 
which  to  measure  the  excesses  committed 
against  them,  I  am  more  astonished  at  their 
smallness  than  their  greatness. 

At  least  a  hundred  times  as  many  have  been 
slaughtered  during  the  same  period  in  the 
Ukraine,  and  perhaps  quite  as  many  in  Hun¬ 
gary  or  Czecho-Slovakia.  I  think  the  ex¬ 
planation  of  this  smallness  is  to  be  found  in 
the  explanation  of  an  undoubted  and  para¬ 
doxical  fact  which  strikes  everyone. 

The  worst  offenders  are  soldiers,  and  the  worst 
soldiers  in  this  respect  are  those  of  General  Haller’s 
army,  which  was  largely  recruited  in  America,  and 
next  to  them  the  Posnanians  or  German  Poles.  So 
the  real  Polish  soldier  is  the  least  guilty,  and  the 
most  are  the  soldiers  who  come  from  the  educated, 
progressive  countries,  especially  America,  which  has 
been  the  first  to  protest  against  these  excesses. 

Poland  is  a  peasant  country,  and  the  Polish  soldier 
is  a  peasant  in  uniform ;  these  peasants  are  too  illiter¬ 
ate  to  be  touched  very  deeply  by  anti-Semitism,  and 
have  lived  too  long  with  the  Jews  not  to  know  him 
quite  well  and  that  he  is  not  always  what  he  is  now 
said  to  be.  But  American  and  German  Poles,  coming 
into  this  atmosphere  of  hatred,  are  inflamed  by  it. 
They  take  the  rhetoric  as  the  exact  truth.  For  them 
the  Jew  is  what  they  are  told  he  is. 


Herein,  I  think,  lies  the  explanation  of  why  the 
excesses  have  been  so  small.  In  a  nation  of  pea¬ 
sants,  the  peasants  (though  by  no  means  attached  to 
the  Jews)  are  not  really  hostile.  What  the  Polish 
peasant  soldier  likes  is  taking  from  the  Jew  the 
money  or  property  which  the  Jew  has  so  long  ex¬ 
tracted  from  him.  Hustling  a  Jew  at  a  railway 
station  means  going  through  his  pockets.  Nowhere 
except,  owing  to  special  causes,  in  Galicia,  have  there 
been  peasant  risings  against  the  Jews.  In  Ukraine 
there  were,  and  thousands  have  been  massacred.  This 
accounts  for  the  small  number  of  deaths  in  Poland. 

The  violent  excesses  are  the  work  of  towns,  but 
chiefly  of  soldiers.  The  leader  of  the  Jewish  Party 
in  the  Diet  distinguishes  between  “pogroms  and  ex¬ 
cesses  in  many  cities  and  towns  of  the  eastern  ter¬ 
ritories  occupied  by  the  Polish  larmy,”  and  those 
“that  have  occurred  in  a  weaker  form  in  Poland,  but 
not  less  insulting  to  Jewish  national  and  human 
honour.”10  This  is  a  convenient  division.  One 
category  is  the  alleged  pogroms  at  Lemberg,  Pinsk, 
Minsk,  Lida,  Vilna,  and  Cracow,  and  the  other 
category  the  general  attacks  on  the  Jews.  It  is  also 
convenient  to  examine  the  second  category  first. 

From  November,  1918,  onwards  for  many  months 
there  was  no  real  Government  in  Poland ;  even  old- 
fashioned  crimes  that  have  died  out,  like  highway 
robbery  and  outlaw  bands,  appeared  again,  and  the 
shadowy  Government  that  existed  was  far  too  busy 
with  the  ideals  of  democracy  to  bother  with  them. 
One  force  there  was  in  Poland,  the  army,  but  that 
was  a  spontaneous  creation  anterior  to  the  existence 
of  government.  It  sprang,  so  to  speak,  from  the 
soil  of  what  had  always  been  a  warrior  nation,  and 
was,  and  is  still,  the  most  anti-Semitic  body  in  Poland. 

The  army  is  anti-Semitic : — 

Firstly,  because  the  Jews  evade  military  service ;  by 
bribery,  desertion,  or  some  other  device  they  escape  all 
service  at  the  front.  The  formation  of  an  army  is 
the  great  achievement  of  Poland’s  first  year,  for  the 
Poles  have  great  martial  and  patriotic  traditions,  and 
their  army  has  formed  and  maintained  itself  under 
conditions  that  would  have  dissolved  most  others. 
The  Jews  in  Poland  have  little  but  commercial  tradi¬ 
tions,  and  are  not  Poles.  The  Polish  Tommy,  how¬ 
ever,  who  has  to  stick  it  at  the  front  without  food  or 
clothes,  in  the  torturing  cold  of  the  Russian  winter, 
is  not  likely  to  enter  into  these  philosophical  considera¬ 
tions.  All  he  knows  is  that  the  Jew  gets  off. 

Secondly:  the  officers  are  drawn  from  the  most 
anti-Semitic  class,  the  nobles  and  the  intelligentsia. 

Thirdly:  Anti-Semitism  is  covertly  but  assiduously 
encouraged  as  a  protection  against  Bolshevism. 

The  connection  between  Jews  and  Bolshev¬ 
ism  is  a  highly  controversial  topic.  The  Com¬ 
mission  had  however  the  opportunity  of  study¬ 
ing  it  at  first  hand  in  the  Eastern  territories 
which  had  been  in  the  hands  of  the  Bolsheviks 
for  a  few  months.  There  the  administration 
and  propaganda,  for  reasons  I  have  already 
mentioned,  was  largely  Jewish;  but  it  was  also, 
and  especially  its  leaders,  Polish.  The  attrac¬ 
tions  of  Bolshevism  are  little  theoretical. 


42 


Bolshevism  spells  business  for  poor  Jews;  in¬ 
numerable  posts  in  a  huge  administration ;  end¬ 
less  regulations,  therefore  endless  jobbery;  big 
risks,  for  the  Bolsheviks  punish  heavily,  every 
offence  being  treated  as  a  form  of  treason ;  but 
big  profits.  The  rich  bourgeois  Jew  also 
manages  to  get  on  with  it  in  his  own  way,  “Ju- 
dische  Weise”  as  the  Jews  call  bribery.  Many 
Jews  who  are  by  no  means  poor,  try  at  the 
present  time  to  escape  into  Russia,  so  fine  are 
the  business  prospects.  Such  a  desirable  state 
of  things  must  naturally  have  charms  for  the 
Jews  in  Poland,  and  in  spite  of  repeated  and 
constant  accusations,  the  Jewish  political 
leaders  have  never  publicly  repudiated  Bol¬ 
shevism,  from  which  I  conclude  that  they  must 
have  many  sympathisers  with  Bolshevism 
among  their  followers.  But  undoubtedly  the 
Poles  also  take  a  large  part  in  the  movement. 
It  is  difficult  to  form  exact  estimates,  and  I 
am  not  certain  of  my  conclusions.  But  while 
the  Commission  was  in  Warsaw,  a  ready-made 
Bolshevik  Goverment.  prepared  to  begin  opera¬ 
tions,  was  arrested  there.  Of  the  nine  mem¬ 
bers,  five  were  Polish,  one  Russian,  and  three 
Jewish.  I  thought  this  might  perhaps  fur¬ 
nish  the  basis  of  a  calculation.  The  Jews 
are  not  more  than  one-sixth  of  the  popu¬ 
lation,  but  had  one-third  of  this  ready-made 
Government.  That  was  twice  their  fair  share, 
and  I  think  this  is  generally  their  share  of 
Bolshevism. 

'  But  whatever  the  truth  is  (and  I  am  far  from 
certain  I  have  reached  it),  the  average  Pole  and  espe¬ 
cially  the  army,  looks  on  Bolshevism  as  an  entirely 
Jewish  invention  and  affair.  The  soldiers  themselves 
on  the  Bolshevik  front  make  Jews  taste  the  food  Jews 
set  before  them  before  daring  to  eat  it,  for  fear  of 
poison.  They  therefore  close  their  ears  to  the  Bol¬ 
shevik  agitator,  as  either  a  Jew  or  an  emissary  of  the 
Jews,  and  the  anti-Semitic  leaders  believe  that  anti- 
Semiticism  has  been  the  shield  of  Poland  against 
Bolshevism.  It  is  certainly  remarkable  that  Poland 
is  the  country  where  general  conditions  favour  Bol¬ 
shevism  most,  and  where  it  has  succeeded  least.  The 
officers  naturally  encourage  these  sentiments,  for  the 
murder  of  officers  is  usually  one  of  the  first  measures 
of  Bolshevism. 

The  use  made  of  anti-Semitism  was  very  interest¬ 
ing  in  an  alleged  pogrom  of  Jews  at  Lodz  brought  to 
our  notice  soon  after  our  arrival.  On  receiving 
complaints,  very  exaggerated  complaints,  of  very 
horrible  doings  we  went  ourselves  to  Lodz  and  found 
the  course  of  events  was  something  like  this.  A  very 
serious  unemployment  riot,  instigated  by  Russian 
Bolshevik  emissaries,  had  taken  place ;  in  a  conflict  be¬ 
tween  the  police  and  the  rioters,  the  police  had  been 
defeated  and  lost  as  many  as  six  killed.  The  authori¬ 
ties  had  felt  uncertain  of  the  military,  and  had  not 
dared  to  use  them.  In  this  difficulty  rumours  were 
spread  in  barracks  that  the  riot  was  a  Jewish  one, 
though  in  fact  it  had  been  no  more  Jewish  than 
Christian,  with  the  result  that  in  the  evening  a  great 


many  assaults  on  Jews  by  soldiers  took  place  in  the 
Jewish  quarter.  The  anti-Semitic  rumor  turned  the 
balance. 

This  imputation  or  suspicion  of  Bolshevism,  whether 
true  or  not,  weighs  heavily  on  the  Jews ;  it  is  a  justifica¬ 
tion  or  pretext  for  every  violence  and  every  exaction, 
house-searching  or  arrest  or  imprisonment,  and  was 
the  answer,  genuine  or  fictitious,  to  the  majority  of 
complaints  made  to  us. 

Sweeping  generalisations  are  easily  exceptional,  but 
they  are  unavoidable,  and  I  think  it  a  true  one  to  say 
of  this  category  of  excesses : — 

Firstly:  that  the  excesses  have  mostly  come  form 
the  soldiers  or  the  gendarmerie ;  roughs  and  civilian 
crowds  join  in,  and  educated  Poles  look  on  and  ap¬ 
plaud.  I  saw  myself  a  Jew  arrested  and  a  whole  crowd 
of  soldiers  and  boys  start  kicking  and  cuffing  him. 
This  incident,  I  think,  evidently  disclosed  the  principle : 
if  anyone  lays  hands  on  a  Jew — legally  or  illegally — 
everyone  else  will  willingly  assist  or  connive. 

Secondly:  that  they  have  steadily  diminished;  from 
November  to  April  was  the  worst  period,  but  in 
spite  of  great  improvement  they  are  still  not  un¬ 
common. 

From  November  1918  to  April  1919,  one  might  al¬ 
most  say  that  the  Jews  were  outlawed,  if  there  had 
been  much  law.  But  there  was  not  much  law  for 
anyone,  and  for  the  Jews  only  very  much  less  than  for 
anyone  else. 

These  excesses  were  what  we  call  assaults  and  bat¬ 
teries.  They  would  range  from  rough  horse-play,  es¬ 
pecially  on  railroads  and  stations,  to  blows  and  some¬ 
times  very  severe  beatings.  Sometimes,  of  course,  the 
most  violent  assaults,  as  throwing  a  Jew  out  of  a 
moving  train,  would  lead  to  death.  In  out  of  the  way 
places  there  must  have  been  some  murders,  and  in 
some  cases  outrages  on  women  and  murders.  For  this 
first  period  it  is  difficult  to  judge;  though  rare,  there 
were  certainly  some  crimes  of  this  sort. 

Overcrowded  trains  and  soldiers  on  leave  travelling 
were  the  most  ordinary  occasions,  but  the  same  sort 
of  thing  took  place  extensively  in  the  streets  on  very 
slight  pretexts.  Beard  cutting  was  an  almost  universal 
sport  and  still  goes  on  largely,  though  this  is  often 
treated  as  mere  rough  fun.  But  the  long  beard  worn 
by  the  Orthodox  Jew,  though  ridiculous  to  others,  has 
a  semi-religious  meaning  to  him  and  is  worn  in  ac¬ 
cordance  with  Talmudic  precepts,  and  his  religious 
convictions  are  entitled  to  respect  as  much  as  those 
of  anyone  else. 

The  assaults  were  accompanied  by  a  great  deal  of 
pilfering,  robbery  and  petty  blackmail:  from  fright¬ 
ening  an  elderly  Jew  at  a  railway  station  into  emptying 
his  pockets,  to  entering  Jewish  shops  and  pillaging 
them.  I  am  inclined  to  look  on  this  as  the  main 
motive. 

In  the  military  zone  all  these  evils  existed  in  a  far 
worse  form.  In  big  towns,  mostly  Jewish,  the  troops 
were  more  careful.  Even  there,  in  capitals  like  Lem¬ 
berg,  pillaging  and  blackmailing  went  on  incessantly. 
But  in  out  of  the  way  places,  chiefly  under  the  pretext 
of  forced  labour,  they  very  often  reduced  the  Jews 
to  a  state  of  slavery.  Conditions  varied  with  the 
temper  of  the  officers. 


43 


The  Polish  army  has  been  quite  unprovided ;  even 
now  they  have  not  got  great-coats  for  the  winter, 
and  it  is  common  enough  for  men  to  desert,  steal  some 
clothes  and  join  again.  They  have  been  compelled  to 
help  themselves  from  everyone,  and  naturally  they 
have  done  so  from  the  Jews  more  than  from  anyone 
else.  The  Polish  Tommy  looks  on  plunder  as  part  of 
the  routine  of  military  life.  They  are  very  fond  of 
being  photographed  with  a  glass  of  wine  in  one  hand 
next  to  a  table  loaded  with  plundered  rouble  notes. 
The  Mission  has  several  of  these  photographs;  honest 
yokel  faces,  quite  unconscious  of  wrong-doing. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  come  to  an  exact  and  general 
statement.  Perhaps  during  this  period  this  one  would 
be  true  on  one  side : — 

Polish  soldiers  are  compelled  by  necessity  to  fall 
into  bad  habits  at  the  front.  All  troops,  even  those 
with  good  habits,  are  difficult  to  keep  in  order  when 
away  from  the  front.  Polish  troops  are  proportion¬ 
ately  difficult  to  keep  in  order  when  away  from  the 
front.  In  both  places  the  Jews  suffered  more  if  not 
exclusively. 

They  suffered  still  more  in  Russian  Poland  at  the 
hands  of  the  gendarmerie,  the  military  police,  very  un¬ 
derpaid  and  armed  with  great  powers.  A  British 
Police  Mission  is  at  present  in  Warsaw  advising  the 
Polish  Government ;  this  is  an  admission  that  the 
condition  of  the  police  was  not  satisfactory.  But  I 
say  very  deliberately,  and  relying  on  Polish,  not  Jew¬ 
ish  evidence,  that  the  conduct  of  the  gendarmerie  was 
such  that  in  many  parts  of  Poland  they  exercised  a 
kind  of  brigandage.  The  best  that  can  be  said  of  them 
is  that,  as  brigands,  they  endured  no  competition,  and 
showed  very  great  courage  and  skill  in  keeping  order, 
especially  against  the  Bolshevik  agitators,  who  infested 
Poland,  and  who  were  very  determined  and  bold.  The 
whole  population  suffered  from  the  gendarmerie,  and 
they  treated  the  Jews  as  prey  who  must  always  pay 
up,  on  every  possible  pretext,  and  who  were  lucky  to 
escape  without  a  broken  head.  Some,  but  not  many, 
deaths  must  be  put  to  their  account. 

In  the  case  of  civilians,  soldiers,  and  gendarmerie 
it  was  the  habit  of  the  Poles  to  insult  Jews  of  every 
kind,  including  perfectly  innnocent  Jewish  ladies,  in 
public  places.  This  fashion  was  that  of  the  Polish 
ladies  and  gentlemen  as  it  was  of  the  common  people. 

During  this  first  period  the  authorities,  such  as  they 
were,  exerted  themselves  but  little.  The  great  com¬ 
plaint  of  the  Jews  is  not  so  much  what  was  inflicted 
on  them  as  the  constant  consciousness  that  they  had 
no  legal  protection. 

During  the  second  period,  from  April  on¬ 
wards,  the  condition  of  the  Jews  has  steadily 
and  rapidly  improved.  The  state  of  affairs  I 
have  described  exists  in  a  very  diminished 
degree  at  present :  to  what  extent  it  is  very 
difficult  to  determine  exactly.  Hearing  com¬ 
plaints  is  very  like  having  a  bell  rung  within  an 
inch  of  one’s  ear :  it  becomes  difficult  to  deter¬ 
mine  how  great  the  sound  really  is.  In  what 
was  Russian  Poland  the  Jews  have  legal  protec¬ 
tion,  but  not  to  the  extent  to  which  they  are 
naturally  entitled  or  to  which  the  treaty  creat¬ 
ing  Poland  gives  them.  Some  very  grave — but 


quite  rare — failures  of  justice  (what,  in  effect, 
were  unpunished  murder  or  attempted  murder) 
were  brought  to  the  notice  of  the  Commission. 
The  “prejudice,”  as  English  lawyers  say,  is 
always  very  strong  against  the  Jews.  In 
criminal  and  civil  justice,  in  the  exercise  of  any 
authority  whatever,  the  law,  when  in  their 
favour,  is  enforced  reluctantly  and  slackly,  and 
very  often  not  at  all ;  when  it  is  against  them, 
it  is  enforced  promptly  and  rigorously.  The 
higher  you  go  the  better  is  the  treatment,  and 
the  lower  you  go,  the  worse  is  the  treatment. 
They  are  not  treated  fairly,  even  in  the  matter 
of  their  legal  rights ;  but  they  are  far  from  per¬ 
secuted.  Neither  have  they  the  full  police  pro¬ 
tection  to  which  they  are  entitled.  I  limit  these 
remarks  to  Russian  Poland.  Even  now,  if  I 
were  an  Orthodox  Jew.  long-bearded  and  black- 
coated,  and  found  myself  in  the  same  train  as  a 
party  of  soldiers,  I  should  travel — as  even  the 
most  reverend  orthodox  Rabbis  do — under  the 
seat. 

The  authorities  still  have  the  greatest  diffi¬ 
culty  in  enforcing  order  in  all  cases,  so  much 
does  the  anarchy  of  the  last  few  years  still 
prevail.  At  Brest-Litovsk  no  less  than  three 
companies  armed  with  ball  cartridge,  and  not 
less  than  six  machine  guns,  surrounded  our 
train  to  arrest  two  soldiers  who  had  stolen  two 
fur  coats.  A  non-commissioned  officer  and 
a  few  men  could  do  it  elsewhere. 

The  instructions  given  to  the  Commission  order  it 
to  adjudicate  on  the  degree  of  responsibility  attach-, 
ing  to  the  Polish  Government  for  these  excesses,  and 
on  this  point  the  instructions  are  peremptory. 

The  responsibility  of  the  Government  may  be  fixed 
by  these  considerations. 

In  what  was  Austrian  Poland,  where  the  Poles  have 
long  had  a  sort  of  autonomy  under  the  Hapsburgs, 
and  where  the  administration  thus  built  up  under  ex¬ 
cellent  traditions  exists,  few  complaints  of,  excesses 
at  the  present  time  have  reached  us.  The  complaints 
all  come  from  Russian  Poland,  where  the  Poles  were 
always  excluded  from  government  and  where  an  ad¬ 
ministration  was  built  up  under  the  Tsarist  tradi¬ 
tions.  It  is  either  with  inexperienced  Poles  or  Poles 
trained  in  these  Tsarist  conditions  that  the  present 
Government  has  to  work.  Therefore  the  first  consid¬ 
eration  is  that  it  has  not  had  the  proper  instruments. 

Poland  as  yet  has  got  no  frontiers,  no  single 
system  of  currency,  or  law,  hardly  any  system 
of  taxation,  and  though  ruined  by  five  years’ 
warfare  on  its  territory,  has  to  carry  on  an 
onerous  war.  The  Government  has  far  greater 
problems  than  the  Jewish  problem,  and  has 
never  really  grappled  with  it.  The  second  con¬ 
sideration  is  that  it  has  hardly  had  the  op¬ 
portunity. 

The  Government  has  inflicted  a  good  deal,  though 
an  insufficient  amount,  of  punishment;  these  punish¬ 
ments  it  has  never  published,  for  fear  of  Polish  public 
opinion.  This,  I  think,  discloses  its  real  attitude.  It 


44 


would  like  to  stop  these  disorders,  but  it  runs  the  risk 
of  being  upset  if  it  does.  Any  measure  that  can  be 
construed  into  favoring  the  Jews  exposes  it  to  attack, 
ar.d  the  Jews  could  never  have  been  completely  de¬ 
fended  without  special  measures.  Poland  has  been 
endowed  with  the  infallible  blessings  of  democratic 
institutions,  and,  as  long  as  it  possesses  them,  its 
Government  cannot  be  required  openly  to  defy  the 
will  of  the  Polish  people ;  indeed,  it  would  violate  the 
very  first  principle  of  its  constitution  if  it  did.  The 
third  consideration,  therefore,  is  that  the  Government 
has  hardly  had  the  power. 

The  responsibility  for  the  excesses  against  the  Jews 
falls  most  of  all  on  the  Polish  intelligentsia,  the  edu¬ 
cated.  well-to-do  class ;  then  next,  but  less,  on  the 
masses.  But  last  of  all  on  the  Government,  which, 
since  the  spring,  has  with  earnest,  though  insufficient, 
exertions  tried  to  stop  these  excesses. 

The  Alleged  Pogroms 

The  second  category  of  excesses  are  the  alleged 
pogroms  at  Lemberg,  Pinsk,  Lida,  Vilna,  and  Cracow. 
The  account  I  read  of  these  seemed  to  be.  after  enquir¬ 
ing  into  them,  mixtures  of  rhetoric  and  evidence,  so 
perhaps  the  best  method  is  to  make  a  bare  finding  of 
fact. 

Lemberg 

In  the  beginning  of  November,  1918,  the  Ukrainian 
forces,  a  small  body  of  men,  entered  Lemberg.  In 
Ukrainia  the  peasantry,  who  were  Ukrainian,  had 
massacred  the  landlords,  who  were  Polish,  and  the 
greatest  mutual  hate  prevailed.  The  Jews  of  Lem¬ 
berg,  numbering  60,000,  acknowledged  the  Ukrainians, 
and  treated  them  as  masters  of  the  town.  When  the 
German  troops  revolted  all  over  Poland  at  the  time 
of  the  Armistice,  and  the  whole  edifice  of  German 
organisation  fell  to  the  ground  in  a  day,  a  few  Polish 
officers,  a  Major  A.  and  others,  raised  a  small  vol¬ 
unteer  force  in  Lemberg  numbering  between  1,000 
and  2,000,  which  was  composed  of  boys,  roughs,  and 
criminals,  and  even  women  in  uniform.  For  nearly 
a  fortnight  they  fought  in  the  streets  against  the 
Ukrainians  and,  on  the  arrival  of  a  similar  force 
similarly  raised  by  General  B.  from  Cracow,  drove  the 
Ukrainians  out  of  the  town.  This  was  really  a 
splendid  feat  of  arms. 

During  this  struggle  the  Jews  proclaimed 
themselves  neutral ;  but,  though  I  do  not  think 
they  gave  any  armed  assistance  to  the  Ukrai¬ 
nians,  their  neutrality  was  highly  benevolent 
to  the  Ukrainians  and  probably  helpful.  They 
thought  the  Ukrainians  would  win. 

Major  A.  and  General  B.  only  kept  their  scratch 
armies  of  2,000  or  3,000  together  bv  promising  them 
forty-eight  hours’  plunder  of  the  Jews.  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  of  three-score  Jews  murdered  during  this 
period,  some  at  least  were  killed  by  accident  in  the 
street  fighting,  but  at  least  the  majority  were  mur¬ 
dered,  and  these  murders  were  accompanied  by  a 
proportionate  amount  of  robbery  and  outrage.  On 


the  second  day  these  troops  unfortunately  found  a 
petrol  store  in  the  Jewish  quarter,  and  used  it  to  burn 
the  quarter  down. 

Some  of  the  murders  were  committed  because  some 
of  the  soldiers  were  criminals.  One  motive,  however, 
both  of  the  murders  and  the  burning,  was  genuine 
fear  of  this  vast  Jewish  population  surrounding  this 
small  body  of  Poles. 

A  large  number  of  the  civilian  population  of  Lem¬ 
berg,  wealthy,  middle-class  people,  joined  in  the  plun¬ 
der  of  the  Jewish  shops. 

Pinsk 

A  Polish  officer,  Major  C.,  found  himself  last 
spring  in  occupation  of  the  town  proper.  He  had  only 
a  very  small  detachment  of  men ;  the  Russian  Bol¬ 
sheviks  had  only  just  been  driven  out,  and  their  lines 
were  quite  close.  The  Jewish  population  of  Pinsk 
showed  a  great  deal  of  coldness  towards  Major  C., 
who  was  suspicious  of  their  relations  with  the  Bol¬ 
sheviks,  and,  I  think  both  irritated  and  anxious;  he 
had  posted  proclamations  that  any  unauthorised  meet¬ 
ing  would  be  punished  by  death. 

On  a  Saturday  afternoon,  the  Zionist  Co-operative 
organisation  had  a  perfectly  proper,  authorised  busi¬ 
ness  meeting.  This  meeting  took  place  in  the  offices  of 
the  Zionist  organisation,  which  is  very  anti-Polish. 
After  the  meeting  had  ended  and  been  formally  closed, 
a  great  many  members  of  the  Co-operative  association 
remained  in  the  same  room  talking  together:  other 
members  of  the  Zionist  organisation,  including  ladies, 
were  in  the  rooms  at  the  same  time.  This  collection 
of  people  must  have  presented  the  appearance  of  a 
meeting,  and  I  think  the  members  remaining  in  one 
room  were  numerous  enough  technically  to  constitute 
a  meeting.  There  was  some  insolence  in  this  and  the 
previous  behaviour  of  the  Jews:  Sir  Stuart  Samuel 
pointed  out  to  the  witnesses  that  their  authorised 
meeting  itself  had  been  a  breach  of  the  Sabbath  and 
therefore  a  grave  religious  offense. 

Polish  soldiers  and  gendarmerie  who  had  been 
pressing  for  forced  labour,  and  probably  using  this  as 
a  blackmailing  pretext,  entered  the  building  (I  am  not 
sure  whether  by  accident  or  owing  to  a  previous  de¬ 
nunciation)  and  arrested  and  searched  those  present. 
They  no  doubt  obtained  a  considerable  amount  of 
money  for  themselves  in  this  search.  They  then  took 
50  or  60  in  number  to  the  headquarters  of  Major  C., 
and  reported  that  they  had  arrested  the  members  of 
an  unauthorised  Jewish  Bolshevik  meeting.  Major 
C.,  who  had  almost  at  the  same  hour  heard  of  a  Bol¬ 
shevik  success  near  the  town,  and  was  preparing  to 
evacuate  it,  gave  orders  for  their  immediate  execution. 
This  was  done  without  trial  of  any  sort  and  even  with¬ 
out  taking  their  names.  One  person  at  least  of  those 
executed  had  been  swept  into  the  crowd  of  prisoners 
by  accident  in  the  street.  The  whole  incident  only 
took  two  or  three  hours. 

Owing  to  an  accident  the  Commission  did  not 
see  Major  C.,  but  I  think,  though  he  acted  with 
great  brutality,  a  court  must  have  acquitted  him  as 
being  within  his  strict  rights.  Real  fear  was  one 


45 


of  his  motives.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  would 
hardly  have  acted  with  such  promptitude  if  others 
than  Jews  had  been  in  question. 

The  gendarmerie  who  made  the  arrests  and  re¬ 
ported  that  they  had  found  a  Jewish  Bolshevik 
meeting  were  chiefly  responsible ;  their  motive  was 
no  doubt  to  avoid  answering  for  the  money  they 
had  obtained  in  the  search.  Their  subsequent  con¬ 
duct  was  even  worse.  The  Jewish  ladies  arrested, 
but  exempted  from  the  execution,  were  kept  in 
prison  without  trial  and  enquiry.  They  were 
stripped  naked  and  flogged.  After  the  flogging  they 
were  made  to  pass  naked  down  a  passage  full  of 
Polish  soldiers.  The  Jews  arrested,  but  excepted 
from  the  execution,  were  next  day  led  to  the  ceme¬ 
tery  where  those  executed  were  buried,  and  made 
to  dig  their  own  graves,  then,  at  the  last  moment, 
they  were  told  they  were  reprieved ;  in  fact,  the 
gendarmerie  regularly  tormented  the  survivors. 

We  were  informed,  but  have  no  exact  information, 
that  the  heads  of  this  gendarmerie  were  subsequent¬ 
ly  found  guilty  of  various  crimes. 

The  victims  were  respectable  lower  middle-class 
people,  school  teachers,  and  such  like. 

Lida,  Vilna,  Minsk 

These  towns  were  all  stormed  by  the  Polish 
troops,  who  drove  out  the  Bolsheviks ;  Lida  and 
Vilna  in  April,  Minsk  in  July.  The  Bolsheviks 
occupied  them  all  from  almost  the  beginning  of  the 
year.  The  Bolshevik  administration  in  all  of  them 
was  directed  by  Poles,  but  the  Jews  tooks  their 
usual  large  part  in  the  Bolshevik  administration, 
and  the  Jewish  population  was,  in  consequence,  as 
usual,  favoured  or  managed  to  get  favoured  (“Jiid- 
ischer  Weise,”  as  the  Jews  call  bribery).  The  Bol¬ 
shevik  chariot  was  drawn  neither  by  terror  nor  by 
plunder:  there  were  no  executions  except  military 
executions  of  deserters  by  the  Chinese  executioners. 
The  Bolshevik  administration  was  a  parody  of  the 
Tsarist  administration,  which  itself  was  little  better 
than  a  parody.  I  think  it  was  probably  a  good  ex¬ 
ample  of  Bolshevik  rule  when  it  is  not  frightened 
into  showing  its  teeth  and  claws. 

In  Lida  and  Vilna  the  Jews  who,  of  course,  are 
Litwaki  in  the  eastern  regions,  were  very  well  dis¬ 
posed  to  the  Bolsheviks  because  they  were  Rus¬ 
sian  :  any  Russian  Government,  even  the  worst, 
rather  than  Polish  Government,  even  the  best.  But 
nowhere  in  any  of  these  three  towns  was  there  any 
organised  resistance  by  the  Jewish  community, 
who  in  Vilna  number  more  than  60,000,  to  the  Po¬ 
lish  troops.  In  Minsk  they  were  less  well  disposed 
to  the  Bolsheviks,  for  the  Bolsheviks  had  been  there 
three  months  longer,  and  they  had  begun  to  experi¬ 
ence  the  usual  efifects  of  Bolshevism  in  towns — 
nothing  to  eat. 

Both  in  Lida  and  Vilna  the  Bolsheviks  had  or¬ 
ganized  small  “garrison  guards,”  a  small  local  Bol¬ 
shevik  garrison.  Young  Jews  had  largely  joined 
this  because  the  garrison  guards  had  such  excellent 
opportunities  of  doing  business,  especially  dealing 


and  speculating  in  food.  In  both  Lida  and  Vilna 
these  Jews  of  the  garrison  guards  fought,  and  fought 
hard,  against  the  Polish  troops. 

Lida  was  taken  first.  A  small  detachment  of 
Polish  troops  entered  the  town,  did  some  fighting 
and  plundering,  and  retreated.  Before  the  Poles 
could  arrive  in  force  the  next  day  the  Bolsheviks 
evacuated  the  town,  but  the  garrison  guard  which 
remained  fought  the  Poles.  Lida  has  a  population 
of  12,000,  of  which  8,000  are  Jews.  When  the  Poles 
arrived  in  force  they  plundered  the  town :  more 
than  30  non-combatant  Jews  were  killed — among 
them  a  considerable  allowance  must  be  made  for 
those  killed  by  accident  in  street  fighting.  Others, 
quite  innocent,  were  made  responsible  for  the  shots 
fired  from  their  houses,  and  executed ;  and  others, 
equally  innocent,  murdered.  The  same  allocation 
of  deaths  must  be  made  in  Vilna,  where  the  total 
number  was  more  than  twice  as  high.  I  am  inclined 
to  think  the  Polish  troops  started  plundering  as 
soon  as  they  entered  Lida  on  both  days.  The  plun¬ 
dering  was  accompanied  by  a  great  deal  of  violence 
and  brutality.  In  billets  at  Lida — but  not  during 
the  fighting — a  Polish  soldier  was  murdered  by  a 
Jew,  and  with  those  horrible  mutilations  practised 
by  Jewish  Chassidim  murderers  and  which  is  one 
of  the  many  ways  in  which  they  do  not  seem  to  be 
European. 

This  murder  and  the  resistance  of  the  garrison 
guard  had  very  much  excited  the  Polish  troops,  who 
surprised  Vilna  a  few  days  later  and  drove  out  the 
Bolsheviks.  The  events  of  Lida  were  repeated,  but 
on  a  very  great  scale  and  with  much  greater  fury. 
There  can  be  no  doubt,  in  spite  of  the  perfectly  sin¬ 
cere  denials  of  the  leaders  of  the  Jewish  community, 
that  many  Jews  fought  with  the  Bolsheviks  as  they 
were  retreating.  The  Polish  military  authorities 
were  genuinely  alarmed,  and  believed  they  were 
threatened  by  the  whole  of  this  vast  Jewish  popu¬ 
lation,  as  their  arrest  of  several  thousand  Jews, 
some  of  whom  are  still  interned,  shows.  There  can 
be  no  less  doubt  that  the  majority  of  the  Jews  sum¬ 
marily  executed,  very  often  from  genuine  error,  for 
having  fired  on  Polish  troops  or  assisted  the  Bol¬ 
sheviks,  were  perfectly  innocent.  There  was  the 
same  plundering,  violence,  and  brutality  as  at  Lida, 
but  on  a  scale  proportionate  to  the  large  Jewish 
population,  and  lasting  about  three  days. 

At  Lida,  certainly,  the  military  authorities  subse¬ 
quently  held  enquiries,  but,  as  might  be  expected, 
it  was  not  possible  to  identify  the  murderers  or  exe¬ 
cutioners. 

At  Minsk,  General  Jadwin,  of  Mr.  Morgenthau’s 
Mission,  was  with  the  Poles,  and  special  measures 
were  taken  by  the  Polish  commanders.  Further, 
the  Jewish  population  had  been  longer  under  Bol¬ 
shevik  rule  and  had  learnt  it  meant  no  food.  In 
spite  of  this  several  Jews  were  killed. 

But  the  behaviour  of  the  Posnanian  troops  indi¬ 
cated  the  feelings  of  the  Polish  soldiers  towards  the 
Jews  better  than  any  general  description.  Knowing 
their  habits  the  Polish  Command  had  ordered  them 
to  pass  right  through  the  town  without  halting. 


46 


This  seemed  to  them  so  gross  an  infringement  of 
their  rights  that  they  disobeyed  orders,  stopped  in 
the  market  place,  and  plundered  the  Jewish  shops. 

Cracow 

Though  pogroms  at  Cracow  were  reported,  this 
was  not  the  case.  The  Jews,  remembering  Lem¬ 
berg,  armed  themselves  and  rather  terrified  every¬ 
one  else. 

The  death,  execution,  or  murder  of  innocent  peo¬ 
ple  cannot  be  justified.  But  not  even  the  military 
commanders  can  be  made  responsible  for  the  events 
at  Lida,  Vilna,  and  Minsk.  A  strong  Government 
might  have  sent  Major  C.  (of  Pinsk)  to  trial,  but 
I  think  an  impartial  court  must  have  acquitted  him ; 
and  a  strong  Government,  disregarding  the  eminent 
services  to  Poland  of  Major  A.  and  General  B.  (of 
Lemberg),  might  have  taken  disciplinary  measures 
against  them.  I  believe  General  B.  was  for  a  short 
time  declared  to  be  not  responsible  for  his  acts. 
But  last  winter,  so  far  from  there  being  a  strong 
Government,  there  was  no  Government  at  all. 

It  seems  undesirable  to  use  the  word  “pogrom,” 
because  the  actual  meaning  of  the  word  (whatever 
its  etymology  may  be)  implies  direction  or  organ¬ 
isation  by  the  Government.  Pogroms  were  mas¬ 
sacres  of  Jews  instigated  and  arranged  by  the  Rus¬ 
sian  Government. 

Nevertheless,  the  murders  of  Lemberg  are  a 
shocking  outrage,  the  disgusting  cruelty  of  which 
is  not  at  all  expressed  in  a  bare  finding  of  fact;  and 
the  Pinsk  executions,  in  their  harsh  brutality,  are 
little  better. 

But  the  horrors  of  Bolshevism,  the  atrocities  of 
the  Ukrainian  risings,  and  the  brutalities  of  the 
struggles  between  the  Germans  and  Russians — next 
to  which  these  events  are  small  and  trivial — have 
dulled  the  consciences  of  men  in  Eastern  Europe ; 
they  have  supped  full  of  horrors  and  can  no  longer 
be  moved.  Otherwise  I  am  sure  that  the  Poles 
themselves  would  have  protested  against  these 
cruelties. 

Future  Condition  of  the  Jews 

All  these  physical  excesses  will  cease  on  demobili¬ 
sation  :  they  are  the  effect  of  war,  or  of  a  state  of 
war.  And  the  more  disgraceful  manifestations  of 
hatred  to  Jews  in  public  will  cease  when  strangers 
begin  to  come  and  go  in  the  country;  otherwise  the 
Poles  will  get  a  bad  reputation  in  the  world.  They 
will  be  shamed  into  behaving. 

But  the  situation  of  the  Jews  will  hardly  be  a 
happier  one.  Every  morning,  an  ordinary  Jewish 
gentleman — in  Warsaw  very  like  what  he  is  in  Lon¬ 
don — reads  papers  that  cover  his  race  with  con¬ 
tumely.  He  and  his  womenfolk  never  deal  with 
Poles  except  to  be  treated  with  insolence,  and  his 
children  come  back  from  school  with  their  ears 
ringing  with  abuse.  Every  independent  Polish  in¬ 
stitution  is  as  determined  to  oust  the  Jews,  the 
national  enemy,  as  in  England,  we,  during  the  war, 
were  to  oust  the  Germans.  Jewish  professors,  how¬ 


ever  able,  have  been  turned  out  of  universities; 
Jewish  doctors,  however  famous,  from  hospitals. 
Every  university,  by  some  means  or  other,  exerts 
itself  to  keep  down  its  Jewish  undergraduates  to  a 
minimum.  Tramway  companies  will  not  have  Jew¬ 
ish  employes,  and  so  on  throughout  the  whole  range 
of  Polish  life.  The  only  body  who  does  act  fairly, 
and  against  whom  no  charges  brought  by  the  Jews 
were  proved,  is  the  Government,  but  even  they  do 
it  more  or  less  secretly.  In  the  matter  of  army 
contracts,  trading,  and  import  licenses,  and  so  on, 
the  very  numerous  accusations  brought  by  the  Jews 
were  groundless. 

This  is  what  I  meant  when  I  said  that  the  Poles 
now  had  other  means  than  the  boycott :  the  boycott 
itself  now  wages  less  fiercely,  because  the  lesson 
has  been  taught.  The  Poles  do  not  now  want  the 
lesson,  and  they  do  it  naturally. 

The  boycott  now  is,  probably,  what  it  always  was. 
The  Jews  are  middlemen,  merchants,  dealers,  shop¬ 
keepers,  and  not  producers.  The  bigger  ones,  the 
richer,  who  are  mostly  Europeanised,  are  protected 
by  natural  causes ;  they  are  too  good  at  business, 
with  their  centuries  of  business  experience,  to  be 
affected  by  it,  or  feel  the  competition  of  the  Poles. 
Boycotting  then  must  always  be  an  expensive  pa¬ 
triotic  luxury.  But  the  smaller,  the  poorer,  who  are 
mostly  Chassidim,  can  and  are  dispensed  with,  and 
suffer  greatly  from  it.  I  will  discuss  their  economic 
condition  later. 

But  with  regard  to  the  general  position  of  the 
Jews  in  Poland,  a  broader  and  higher  view  must 
be  taken. 

Poland  will  be  mostly  Polish,  but  not  entirely;  it 
will  have  many  minorities:  the  Ruthenian,  now  pro¬ 
tected  by  a  semi-autonomy;  the  Jews,  aspiring  to 
autonomy;  the  White  Russian,  still  unconscious, 
but  who  one  day  may  also  dally  with  self-determi¬ 
nation — to  say  nothing  of  Germans  and  Lithuanians 
looking  to  their  brethren  across  the  frontier.  It  will 
be  far  from  homogeneous.  If  a  plebiscite  were 
taken  to-day  in  Warsaw,  the  capital  of  Poland,  as 
to  whether  Warsaw  should  be  Polish,  yes  or  no, 
the  answer  might  quite  easily  be  no. 

These  minorities  it  must  reconcile:  it  is  a  condi¬ 
tion  of  its  existence.  It  can  only  do  so  by  giving 
them  all  a  fair  and  strong  Government.  Otherwise 
it  will  be  distracted  in  time  of  peace  and  deserted 
in  time  of  war.  As  for  the  Jews,  a  powerful  and  just 
administration,  in  spite  of  an  enduring  social  preju¬ 
dice,  would  make  them  loyal  to  Poland,  which  is 
what  they  are  far  from  being  now.  The  Chassidim, 
who  act  in  accordance  with  the  Talmudic  maxim, 
“Pay  not  homage  unto  a  new  king,”  are  only  wait¬ 
ing  to  see  whether  the  new  king  will  last;  and  such 
an  administration  would  take  the  wind  right  out>  of 
the  sails  of  the  Jewish  Nationalist  Party. 

There  is  a  school  of  very  eminent  Polish  politi¬ 
cians  who  think  that  these  minorities  can  be  either 
driven  out  or  bullied  out  of  themselves,  and  this 
idea  is  really  the  source  of  anti-Semitism.  But 
though  persecution  or  emigration  might  largely  dis¬ 
burden  Poland  of  its  Jews,  and  probably  will,  there 
will  still  be  millions  left.  These  statesmen,  how- 


47 


ever  eminent,  have  not  till  now  had  any  experience 
of  affairs,  because  Poland  has  not  till  now  become 
a  State.  But  they  will  find  that  working  on  men 
is  very  different  from  working  on  paper  and  ink; 
that  the  Jews  are  supple  but  tough  adversaries ;  and 
that  a  race  planted  in  Poland  a  thousand  years,  how¬ 
ever  inconvenient,  cannot  be  eradicated  without  a 
convulsion  that  would  be  almost  fatal. 

Recommendations 

The  instructions  given  to  the  Commission  enjoin 
them  to  report  on  the  general  economic  condition 
of  the  Jews,  and  it  is  on  this  side  that  the  Jews, 
might  really  be  given  assistance. 

The  great  mass  of  poor  Jews  are  Chassidim;  the 
wealthier  are  Europeanised  and  far  more  lax;  for 
wealth  rapidly  destroys  piety,  and,  lest  I  be  thought 
flippant,  I  record  that  this  observation  is  not  my 
own,  but  that  of  the  most  eminent  Rabbi  in  Warsaw. 
The  Chassidim  form  an  immense  mass  of  squalid 
and  helpless  poverty,  the  existence  of  which  would 
be  a  great  problem,  even  if  the  relations  of  the  Poles 
and  Jews  were  perfectly  harmonious. 

For  these  poor  Jews  are  all  dealers,  as  their 
ancestors  have  been  for  centuries:  and  for 
their  particular  kind  of  dealing,  capitalists  as 
they  are  with  a  capital  of  a  few  shillings,  there 
is  every  year  less  and  less  room.  The  Jew  in 
the  country  who  lives  by  lending  a  few 
roubles  to  a  peasant  and  taking  a  chicken  as 
interest,  or  who  buys  a  load  of  vegetables  and 
resells  them,  or  is  a  pedlar;  the  Jew  in  the 
town  who  is  a  hawker,  a  tout,  or  in  some 
small  middleman’s  business,  these  have  great¬ 
er  and  greater  difficulty  in  making  a  living. 
There  must  be  millions  of  such  in  Poland. 
The  co-operative  society  and  store,  and  the 
bank  drive  them  more  and  more  out  of  busi¬ 
ness  in  the  country,  and  more  modern  meth¬ 
ods  of  distribution  in  the  town ;  and  this  is 
likely,  now  the  economic  development  of  Po¬ 
land  is  no  longer  to  be  artificially  restricted, 
to  go  on  faster  and  faster.  It  is  they  who 
suffer  from  the  boycott,  because  it  excludes 
them  from  all  kinds  of  occupations — tramway 
employes,  for  example —  of  no  great  skill, 
which  they  are  capable  of  following.  And 
they  cannot  emigrate :  how  can  they  get  a 
living  in  a  foreign  country  when  their  sole 
means  of  livelihood  is  bargaining  in  Yiddish 
and  Polish?  The  best  proof  of  this  is  the  way 
they  are  sweated  in  semi-unskilled  trades 
when  they  do  emigrate.  They  are  hardly  ever 
producers:  on  this  point  everyone  is  agreed, 
and  the  Zionist  Congress  say  the  same  as  M 
Dmowski.  Poor  Jews  cannot  go  into  fac¬ 
tories,  partly  because  of  their  Sabbatarian 


principles,  partly  because  Polish  workmen 
will  not  work  with  people  whose  personal 
habits  are  so  unclean.  When  they  are  arti¬ 
sans  they  are  unskilled,  or  almost  unskilled: 
cheap  tailors  or  similar  trades.  The  result  is 
that  in  towns  it  is  they  who  fill  the  sweating- 
dens,  as  sweaters  or  sweated,  and  as  such  are 
familiar  to  us,  because  they  play  the  same 
piteous  part  in  the  East  End  of  London. 
Furthermore,  they  are  also  driven  into  all 
sorts  of  illicit  or  fraudulent  practices,  and  I 
think  the  Poles  are  right  when  they  complain 
that  too  large  a  proportion  of  convictions  for 
such  offences  are  Jewish. 

They  are  unfit  for  the  modern  economic 
world,  not  in  consequence  of  any  fault  of  their 
own,  but  in  consequence  of  a  long  historical 
past;  in  this  respect  (but  in  this  respect  only) 
they  are  comparable  to  the  negroes  in  the 
United  States,  whom  a  long  past  in  African 
forests  or  in  American  plantations,  unfitted  to 
take  their  place  in  the  modern  world  when 
they  are  turned  out  into  it,  and  who  present 
an  analogous  problem  in  the  United  States. 
Booker  Washington,  who  did  so  much  for  the 
negro,  called  his  gospel  by  the  very  modest 
name  of  the  “gospel  of  the  toothbrush,”  and 
always  insisted  that  keeping  clean,  learning  a 
trade  or  some  occupation  of  physical  skill,  or 
suchlike  humble  lessons,  which  education,  in 
its  ever-loftier  flights  disdains,  was  what  the 
negro  really  required.  And  this  is  what  the 
enormous  mass  of  Orthodox  Jews  really  re¬ 
quire  ;  but  as  the  average  intelligence  of  the 
Jew  and  the  Negro  are  not  only  different,  but 
stand  at  the  opposite  ends  of  the  scale,  there 
is  very  much  more  prospect  of  succeeding 
with  them. 

The  enlightened  East  Jews  recognise  this,  but  I 
doubt  whether  West  Jews  do,  or  could  easily  be  got 
to  recognise  anything  so  contrary  to  their  fixed 
ideas  as  that  any  Jews  exist  who  are  unfitted  for 
the  modern  economic  world.  But  no  one  else  can 
help  these  poor  people,  who  engrossed  as  they  are 
in  the  practice  of  their  strange  and  age-old  religion, 
will  look  with  suspicion  on  anything  that  does  not 
come  to  them  from  their  co-religionists  and  Rabbis. 

The  Commission  of  which  I  have  the  honour  of 
being  a  member  was  appointed  in  consequence  of 
representations  made  by  the  Jewish  community  in 
Great  Britain,  and  the  sole  recommendation  I  ven¬ 
ture  to  make  is  that  the  same  community  be  invited 
to  study  this  side  of  the  subject. 

I  have,  &c. 

P.  WRIGHT. 

Sir  Horace  Rumbold,  Bart.,  G.C.M.G.,  M.V.O. 


1  See  the  “Jewish  Chronicle,”  August  1,  1919,  p.  23.  2  See  L.  Stein, 

“Die  Vorschriften  der  Thora,”  1904.  3  See  Graetz,  “Geshichte  der 

Juden.”  4  See  H.  Cohen,  “Das  Problem  der  Judischen  Sittenlehre.” 
5  See  Graetz,  “Geschichte  der  Juden.”  6  For  a  full  but  partial  account 
of  the  whole  process,  see  “Die  Juden  der  Gegenwart,”  by  A.  Ruppin, 
Judischer  Verlag,  Koln,  1911.  7  See  “Die  Rassenmerkmale  der  Juden.” 


by  Fishberg,  Ernst  Reinhardt,  Munich,  1913.  8  See  “Die  General 

Privilegien  der  Polnischen  Judenschaft,”  by  P.  Bloch,  J.  Jolowicz, 
Posen,  1832.  9  See  the  Resolution  of  the  Fourth  Zionist  Congress, 

August  19,  1919.  10  See  Mr.  Grunbaum’s  declaration  adopted  at  the 

Fourth  Zionist  Conference,  Warsaw,  August  19,  1919. 


48 


Typical  Hymns  of  Hate 

and  a  Few  Other  Voices 


AN  EXAMPLE  OF  MODERATION 

Prince  Casimir  Lubomirski,  the  former  pro-Ger¬ 
man  burgomaster*  of  Warsaw  and  the  present  Polish 
Minister  or  Ambassador  to  the  United  States,  de¬ 
clares  shame-facedly  that  every  native  of  Poland  of 
good  character,  is  by  the  Polish  Constitution,  a  citi¬ 
zen,  and  any  immigrant  coming  into  Poland  can  be¬ 
come  a  citizen  in  the  same  way  as  he  can  in  the 
United  States,  except  that  the  period  of  probation 
is  ten  instead  of  five  years.  Prince  Lubomirski 
further  insists  that  Poland  does  not  discriminate  be¬ 
tween  citizen  and  citizen,  and  that  all  are  equal  be¬ 
fore  the  law  and  all  are  free  to  do  as  they  please  and 
to  go  their  own  way  as  long  as  they  do  not  violate 
the  laws  of  the  country.  According  to  this  princely 
gentleman  of  Polish  habits,  there  is  actually  no  Jew¬ 
ish  question  in  Poland,  for  the  Polish  Constitution 
provides  for  the  emancipation  of  the  Polish  Jews. 
The  gentlemen  in  Washington  have  listened  to  this 
explanation  of  his  Polish  Excellency  and  are 
astounded.  On  the  one  hand  there  are  authentic 
reports  reaching  this  country  daily  to  the  effect  that 
the  Polish  people  are  crazy  with  Jew'hatred,  and 
that  they  are  busily  engaged  in  pogroms  and  in  all 
forms  of  Jew-baiting,  and  on  the  other  hand  there 
is  an  official  declaration  on  the  part  of  the  accredited 
Polish  Minister  to  the  United  States  in  which  he 
says  that  the  Jews  in  Poland  are  emancipated  and 
are  free  to  do  as  they  please  as  long  as  they  do  not 
violate  the  laws  of  Poland.  Prince  Lubomirski  is 
the  only  Polish  representative  abroad  who  has  the 
audacity,  nay  the  impudence,  to  tell  the  most  shame¬ 
ful  lies  regarding  the  treatment  of  the  Polish  Jews. 
The  well-known  Polish  musician.  Casimir  Stojow- 
sky,  in  an  article  published  in  this  month’s  “North 
American  Review”  is  going  one  better.  To  him, 
Poland  is  actually  paradise,  a  blessing  to  humanity, 
a  blessing  to  civilization  and  a  blessing  to  all  the 
Poles  and  to  all  those  who  live  in  Poland. 

We  presume  that  there  is  a  specimen  of  humanity 
that  can  best  be  characterized  as  prize-liars,  and  that 
the  Polish  representatives  abroad  personify  best 
this  specimen  of  humanity. 

The  Polish  representatives  abroad  know  very 
well  that  among  the  three  million  Jews  in  Poland 
there  is  not  one  who  holds  an  official  office  or  mu¬ 
nicipal  office,  that  the  Jews  are  actually^  excluded 
from  participation  in  the  management  of  the  State. 
The  Polish  representatives  abroad  know  very  well 
that  the  Jews  in  Poland  are  excluded  from  most  all 
the  industries  and  are  also  driven  out  of  trade  and 
commerce.  The  Polish  representatives  abroad  know 
perfectly  well  that  there  is  an  organized  social  eco¬ 
nomic  boycott  between  the  Poles  and  the  Polish 
Jew,  called  into  being  some  fifteen  years  ago  and 
making  rapid  strides,  not  only  in  Poland  proper,  but 
in  all  the  countries  occupied  by  the  Polish  military. 
The  Polish  representatives  abroad  know  perfectly 


well  that  the  Polish  Jews  are  being  robbed  and 
beaten  every  day  in  the  presence  of  the  Polish 
police,  they  know  that  there  is  no  protection  for  the 
Polish  Jews,  they  know  that  each  and  every  Polish 
Jew  must  give  away  part  of  his  poor  income  to  the 
police,  if  he  wants  to  be  safe  in  the  streets  or  wants 
to  be  insured  against  beard  pulling,  or  any  other 
pogrom-like  activity  of  the  Polish  ruffians.  The 
Polish  representatives  abroad  know  that  the  Polish 
academic  authorities  do  not  admit  Jews  to  the  Po¬ 
lish  universities,  because  they  are  Jews,  and  that  the 
Polish  government  is  doing  its  utmost  to  outdo. 
Czarism.  They  know  that  all  the  outrages  perpe¬ 
trated  by  old  Russia  against  the  Jews  are  child-play 
in  comparison  with  the  appalling  crimes  committed 
by  the  Polish  government  and  the  Polish  people 
against  the  Jews.  If  the  American  people  knew 
only  one-tenth  part  of  the  crimes  committed  by  Po¬ 
land  against  the  Jews,  no  Pole  would  dare  to  show 
his  face  in  this  country.  The  Polish  representatives 
abroad  know  that  even  the  Spanish  inquisition  has 
not  committed  so  many  crimes  against  the  Jews  as 
Poland  is  committing  now,  but  still  they  have  the 
audacity  and  impudence  to  assert  that  all  is  well 
with  the  Polish  Jews,  that  they  are  not  discrimi¬ 
nated  against,  and  that  their  rights  are  guaranteed 
by  the  Constitution.  We  know  that  the  rights  are 
guaranteed  by  the  Constitution,  but  to  the  Poles 
the  Constitution  of  their  own  country  does  not  mean 
anything?  To  them  the  Constitution  is  just  a  scrap 
of  paper,  and  it  is  so  because  the  Poles,  a  demoral¬ 
ized  and  degenerated  people,  are  a  nation  without 
honor,  and  without  honesty,  and  they  are  the  only 
nation  among  all  the  re-established  eastern  Euro¬ 
pean  nations  who  have  started  their  new  career  by 
committing  crimes  and  outrages  against  national 
and  religious  minorities.  It  is  obvious  that  a  po- 
gromist  people,  like  the  Poles,  will  do  anything  to 
hide  their  crimes  for  the  time  being  and  that  their 
representatives  will  act  like  prize-liars  and  lie  away 
the  blue  from  the  sky  in  order  to  gain  a  momentary 
success.  But  one  cannot  fool  all  the  people  all 
the  time.  The  day  will  soon  come  when  these 
Lubomirskies  and  Stojowskies  and  other  Polish 
prize-liars  in  the  western  countries  will  be  recog¬ 
nized  as  such  and  their  assurances  will  no  more 
carry  weight  than  those  of  the  Prussians  under  the 
Hohenzollerns.  Poland  born  in  crime  and  sin  will 
go  under  in  a  sea  of  crime  and  sin. 

— From  “The  Sentinel ”  the  American  Jeunsh 
Weekly,  Chicago,  July  23,  1920. 

*  The  truthfulness  of  this  type  of  journalism  may  be 
judged  by  this  reference.  There  was  no  “pro-German 
burgomaster"  of  Warsaw  under  the  German  occupation, 
but  a  regency  Council  was  instituted,  composed,  among 
others,  of  the  archbishop  of  Warsaw  and  Zdzislav  Lu¬ 
bomirski,  who  was  quite  distantly  related  to  the  present 
Minister  of  Poland  to  the  United  States. 


49 


POLISH  REVOLT  IS  NEAR,  » 

SAYS  JUSTICE  LEVY 

N.  Y.  Jurist,  in  Paris,  Likens  Army  to  Mexican 
Bandits — Tells  of  Frequent  Pogroms 

By  C.  F.  BERTELLI, 

Special  Correspondent  of  New  York  American 

Paris,  Aug.  11 — Poland  is  less  fit  for  self-govern¬ 
ment  than  the  Philippines,  and  the  Polish  army  is 
in  worse  shape  than  the  Mexican  bandits.  So  as¬ 
serted  Justice  Aaron  Levy,  presiding  Justice  of  the 
New  York  Municipal  Court,  returning  here  from 
Warsaw  this  morning.  He  gave  me  a  statement  de¬ 
scribing  the  conditions  in  Poland  as  “absolutely  in¬ 
credible,”  adding: 

“Giving  Poland  her  independence  was  the  worst 
mistake  of  the  makers  of  the  Treaty  of  Versailles. 
The  Polish  people  do  not  know  the  first  rudiments 
of  self-government.  The  great  mass  of  the  people  is 
illiterate  and  unintelligent  and  is  unable  to  use  the 
franchise.  The  people  live  in  terror  and  oppression. 
The  Polish  treatment  of  the  Jews  must  be  seen  to 
be  believed. 

“By  day  and  night  miniature  pogroms  are  exe¬ 
cuted"  throughout  Poland.  By  an  edict  from  War¬ 
saw  not  one  Jew  is  permitted  to  be  a  farmer  or  to 
work  on  the  public  utilities.  As  a  result  their  land 
has  been  confiscated  and  they  have  been  driven  en 
masse  into  the  small  towns  and  cities.  There,  utter¬ 
ly  dispirited  and  hopeless,  they  abjectly  desire  peace 
at  any  cost,  preferring  the  Soviet  regime  to  the  pres¬ 
ent  government,  which  is  universally  hated. 

“In  any  event  there  soon  will  be  a  revolution  in 
Poland.  For  if  the  government  does  not  withdraw 
I  am  positive  that  the  peasants  will  rise  en  masse 
and  kick  it  out. 

“When  I  left  Poland  Sunday  the  Soviet  Army 
was  thirty  miles  from  Warsaw  and  advancing  rapid¬ 
ly.  No  preparations  were  made  for  the  defense  of 
the  city.  When  I  return  to  America  I  intend  to 
urge  by  every  means  in  my  power  the  intervention 
of  the  United  States  to  save  the  millions  of  Jews  in 
Poland1  from  extermination.” 

—New  York  American,  August  12,  1920. 


THE  IDEALS  OF  POLAND* 

By  His  Excellency,  HUGH  GIBSON, 

American  Minister  to  Poland 

When  I  went  to  Poland  a  little  over  a  year  ago, 
for  the  first  time,  or  rather  a  few  months  before 
I  went  there,  it  was  a  country  without  a  govern¬ 
ment,  practically  a  howling  wilderness  from  end 
to  end,  a  country  without  any  organized  railway 
system  or  distribution  of  food  or  any  of  the  normal 
facilities  of  modern  life.  To-day  there  is  a  very 
distinct  contrast  to  that  time.  Orderly  government 
is  maintained  throughout  all  the  territories  held  by 
the  Polish  Government.  The  railway  system, 


while  not  yet  perfect,  is  rapidly  getting  better. 
Food  distribution  is  improving  day  by  day,  and  al¬ 
together  there  is  a  decided  progress.  And,  in  spite 
of  the  sufferings  of  the  past  six  years — sufferings 
that  we  can  hardly  understand — the  progress  of  the 
past  few  months  has  been  sufficient,  not  only  to 
keep  up  the  high  morale  of  the  Army  and  the  civil 
population,  but  to  key  them  to  a  higher  pitch, 
which  gives  us  every  reason  to  hope  that  Poland 
will  pull  through,  overcome  all  her  obstacles,  and 
establish  herself  as  a  center  of  orderly  government, 
that  is  essential  to  the  maintenance  of  order  and 
peace  in  eastern  Europe. 

*From  an  address  delivered  at  the  inaugural  luncheon 
of  the  American-Polish  Chamber  of  Commerce  and  In¬ 
dustry,  New  York,  May  27,  1920. 


THE  CURE  OF  POLAND’S  EVILS 
By  HENRY  MORGENTHAU 

If  American  Jewry  wants  to  cure  the  evils  of  Po¬ 
land  they  must  get  at  the  root  of  it.  Sending  one 
or  two  million  Jews  to  Palestine  will  do  little  good. 
The  evil  consists  in  allowing  the  Jews  in  a  town  to 
follow  one  or  two  pursuits.  Where  there  are  5,000, 
perhaps  1,000  of  them  could  make  an  honest  living, 
but  5,000  must  cheat  each  other  or  starve.  They 
must  be  given  schools  of  instruction.  They  must 
change  their  mode  of  life.  It  will  take  a  year’s  in¬ 
tensive  study  to  find  out  how  to  do  it,  but  it  would 
be  a  most  creditable  achievement  for  those  Jews 
who  have  benefited  by  liberty  in  this  country. 

— From  a  Speech  Before  the  Judaeans,  New 
York,  December  14,  1919,  and  Reprinted 
from  the  New  York  Times  of  December 
15,  1919. 


PATRIOTISM 

Secretary,  the.  American  Polish  Chamber  of  Com¬ 
merce,  New  York. 

My  Dear  Sir: 

In  reply  to  your  circular  letter*  of  August  30th. 
I  beg  to  inform  you  that  I  am  not  interested  in 
doing  business  with  Poland,  although  I  was  myself 
born  at  Warsaw. 

But  having  been  informed  last  year,  while  in 
Paris,  how  the  Polish  people  were  persecuting  the 
Hebrew  face  of  which  I  am  proud  to  be  a  member. 
Thave  no  confidence  nor  desire  to  have  any  business 
association  with  the  Polish  people. 

Therefore,  you  will  kindly  eliminate  mailing  any 
further  advertising  matter  to  me. 

ISIDORO  GeLBTRUNK, 

67  Worth  Street. 

*A  letter  sent  out  by  the  American-Polish  Chamber  of 
Commerce  drawing  attention  to  business  opportunities  in 
Poland. 


50 


IF  WARSAW  FALLS 

Editor  Globe: — You  wonder  what  will  happen  if 
Warsaw  falls.  Here  is  my  guess,  based  upon  a 
pretty  fair  understanding  of  the  Bolshevist  mind. 
The  Polish  Army  will  have  been  annihilated  long 
before  Warsaw  is  reached.  When  that  is  accom¬ 
plished  the  purpose  for  which  Soviet  Russia  mobi¬ 
lized  its  army,  much  against  its  will,  shall  have  been 
achieved.  They  will,  therefore,  evacuate  Poland. 
Meanwhile  the’  Polish  proletariat,  freed  from  the 
despotism  which  made  them  the  gendarme  of  allied 
imperialism,  will  have  established  their  own  govern¬ 
ment.  Warsaw  will  surrender — to  the  Polish 
Soviet. 

What  will  the  Allies  do?  Why,  open  trade  with 
Soviet  Russia.  Morris  Zucker. 

New  York,  July  9. 

— New  York  Globe,  July  13,  1920. 


MORE  POGROMS  BY  BEATEN  POLES 

Editor  Globe : — Reports  of  pogroms  and  mas¬ 
sacres  perpetrated  by  the  treacherous,  cowardly 
Polish  hordes  upon  the  Jews,  in  their  hasty  retreat 
before  the  Soviet  armies,  are  again  flooding  the 
Jewish  newspapers.  (The  English  press  is  silent 
on  such  news,  as  usual). 

A  bloody  pogrom  was  organized  in  my  own 
native  town,  Bobruisk,  with  every  home  pillaged 
and  the  women  ravaged  in  the  open  in  broad  day¬ 
light  by  the  blood-thirsty  Polish  beasts.  My  own 
people  may  have  become  victims  of  some  Polish 
assassin’s  hand.  The  imperialistic  clique  of  the 
Allied  Powers  have  with  shameless  hypocrisy 
raised  the  cry  that  Poland  is  being  crushed  by  the 
Bolsheviki,  that  Poland  is  being  enslaved  by  Rus¬ 
sia,  that  Poland’s  independence  must  be  safe¬ 
guarded,  and  that  we  must  “come  to  her  rescue. 

The  massacres  of  the  Jews  by  the  Polish  military, 
and  the  persecution  of  the  Jews  by  the  Polish  Gov¬ 
ernment  officials  did  not  annoy  the  allied  rulers  in 
the  least.  In  fact,  it  seems  as  if  they  wouldn’t  give 
a  whoop  if  the  whole  Jewish  population  of  Poland 
were  put  to  slaughter,  so  long  as  the  Polish  junkers 
and  black  hundred  kept  themselves  amused,  and 
satisfied  to  be  the  “buffer  state’’  between  western 
“civilization”  and  “culture,”  and  the  Bolsheviki’s 
dangerous  doctrine  of  “No  work,  no  eat”  to  be  ap¬ 
plied  to  all  husky,  healthy  fellows. 

In  spite  of  the  whining  protestations,  and  even 
the  threat  of  a  holy  war  upon  it  by  the  militaristic 
clique  of  the  Allies,  the  Soviet  government ,  must, 
and  no  doubt  will,  completely  disarm  the  'Polish 
brigands,  even  as  we  would  take  away  the  gun 
from  a  dangerous  criminal,  notwithstanding  the 
pleas  of  his  fr;ends  to  leave  the  weapon  with  their 
comrade. 

Charles  Golosman. 

New  York,  Aug.  10. 

— Nezv  York  Globe,  Aug.  18,  1920. 


CONDITIONS  IN  POLAND 

To  the  Editor  of  The  World: — Allow  me  to  express 
my  admiration  of  the  most  accurate  and  truthful 
analysis  of  Poland  and  her  traits  by  your  corre¬ 
spondent  Mr.  Arno  Dosch-Fleurot  in  today’s 
“World.”  If  there  was  ever  “a  guest  for  a  while 
who  sees  for  a  mile,”  it  is  this  genius  of  a  journalist 
who  is  a  worthy  representative  of  your  esteemed 
paper. 

As  a  member  of  the  Jewish  race  who  had  the  mis¬ 
fortune  of  being  born  and  raised  in  that  country 
and  subject  to  the  oppressive  and  cruel  methods  of 
the  Poles’  dealing  with  any  one  who  is  unfortun¬ 
ate  enough  to  be  at  their  mercy,  I  cannot  but  regret 
the  fact  that  my  beloved  U.  S.  A.,  of  which  I  have 
the  honor  of  being  a  citizen  now,  has  listened  to 
the  yelp  of  the  treacherous  and  always  imperialistic 
Poland,  and  so  generously  extended  to  her  its  help¬ 
ing  hand  and  good-will,  of  which  she  is  unworthy. 
There  is  but  one  thing  in  the  victorious  outcome  of 
the  war  for  democracy  that  will  always  make  me, 
and  thousands  of  others  who  are  still  under  Po¬ 
land’s  heel,  regret  the  sacrifices  we  have  offered  for 
that  great  and  worthy  cause,  and  that  is  the  con¬ 
sequent  independence  granted  to  Poland,  which  is 
to  her  a  license  to  mistreat  and  persecute  all  people 
of  other  nationality  under  her  rule.  I.  H.  L. 

Brooklvn.  Julv  11. 

—World,  July  22,  1920. 


SIR  STUART  SAMUEL, 

He  Puts  Responsibility  for  Outrages  up  to  the 
Polish  Government 

Sir  Stuart  Samuel  is  at  the  head  of  the  British 
investigating  commission,  which,  after  investigat- 
ing  Jewish  conditions  in  Poland,  placed  the  blame 
for  the  bloody  pogroms  upon  the  Polish  Govern¬ 
ment.  The  report  brings  shocking  details  of  bru¬ 
tality  displayed  by  soldiers  in  persecuting  the  Jew¬ 
ish  population,  and  cites  numerous  cases  where 
Jewish  women  were  stripped  naked  and  flogged 
mercilessly  without  cause. 

— From  the  Press,  Long  Beach,  Cal.  This  is 
the  caption  that  zvas  published  in  hundreds 
of  papers  throughout  the  United  States, 
zvithout  change,  beneath  a  Keystone  Syndi¬ 
cate  picture  of  Sir  Samuel. 


GIBSON’S  OPTIMISM  ON  POLAND 

It  is  perhaps  safe  to  say  that  no  Government, 
since  orderly  governments  were  established,  has 
been  faced  with  so  many  serious  problems,  at  one 
time.  But  to  my  mind  the  essential  thing  is  not  the 
magnitude  of  the  problems,  but  the  manner  and  the 
spirit  in  which  they  are  approached.  And  it  is  in 
that  phase  of  the  matter  that  I  find  ground  for  r 
optimism. 

— From  an  address,  “The  Ideals  of  Poland ,” 
by  His  Excellency,  Hugh  Gibson,  American 
Minister  to  Poland. 


51 


BOERSIANER  SENDS  AN  OPEN  NOTE  TO 
PRINCE  LUBOMIRSKI,  POLISH  MIN¬ 
ISTER  IN  UNITED  STATES 

By  BOERSIANER 

Chicago,  Aug.  12 — To  Poland’s  Minister  at  Wash¬ 
ington,  Prince  Lubomirski: — Excellency: 

It  is  reported  you  will  solicit  from  the  United 
States  another  loan  for  your  country:  To  the  $100,- 
000,000  already  loaned  by  the  American  Govern¬ 
ment  and  the  $50,000,000  odd  advanced  by  private 
American  creditors  to  your  people  and  their  repre¬ 
sentatives  you  will  ask  that  a  fairly  large  sum  be 
added. 

Your  Excellency  knows  that  in  purely  money 
matters  financiers  are  subjective,  not  objective,  and 
that  political  economy,  as  such,  does  not,  in  the  ab¬ 
stract,  concern  itself  about  the  moral  or  religious 
phases  of  a  community.  The  former  look  to  their 
security  and  interest.  The  latter  to  the  thrift  of  a 
commonwealth. 

But  you  must  also  be  aware  that  when  the  moral 
attitude  of  a  government  and  the  religious  prejudice 
and  fanaticism  of  a  people  are  of  a  nature  to  impel 
resentment  on  the  part  of  many  and  important  lead¬ 
ers  in  world  finance ;  when  the  thrift  of  a  nation  is 
seriously  jeopardized  by  murdering  and  plundering 
one-fifth  of  that  nation’s  useful  and  thrifty  citizens 
— then  finance  and  political  economy  must  inter¬ 
vene. 

Religious  Difference 

There  are  in  your  country  3,000,000  patriotic 
Poles  who  differ  in  their  religion  from  the  rest  of  the 
populace.  The  difference  is  neither  organic  nor 
structural.  It  is  supplemental.  Yet,  slight  as  it  is, 
it  has  been  made  the  incentive — or  the  excuse — for 
assassination  and  pillage  of  the  minority.  Children, 
women,  old  men  and  invalids  as  well  as  strong 
men  have  been  wantonly  butchered  and  ruthlessly 
robbed  for  no  other  reason  than  that  they  were 
Jews. 

These  butcheries  and  robberies  find  no  parallel 
for  cruelty  and  cowardice  in  the  pogroms  under  the 
old  regime  in  Russia,  for,  under  czardom,  the  gov¬ 
ernment  made  at  least  some  attempt  to  prevent  and 
to  stop  them.  But  in  your  country  your  government 
deliberately  planned  and  executed  them,  specifically 
in  Lemberg,  Lida,  Vilna  and  Pinsk.  In  the  last 
named  city  the  awful  massacre  was  absolutely  a 
military  murder — all  the  murderers  wore  the  Polish 
uniform. 

You  know  what  I  write  is  fact,  know  that  the 
appalling  record  is  to  be  found  in  the  report  of  the 
British  Commissioner  to  Poland  to  investigate  the 
nameless  slaughters.  Thousands  of  innocent  crea¬ 
tures  have  been  killed,  maimed,  their  property 
stolen,  at  the  direct  instigation  of  your  Government, 
by  Polish  soldiers,  Polish  fanatics,  Polish  profes¬ 
sional  murderers  and  thieves ;  victims  who  loved  and 
served  Poland  in  war  and  in  peace ;  whose  ancestors 
have  lived  in  Polish  territory  for  centuries ;  the  most 
part  of  which  were  industrious  artisans ;  the  minor¬ 


ity  of  which  were  skillful  financiers  and  knowl- 
edgeous  economists,  for  whom  Poland  was  in  sore 
need  ;  murdered  and  robbed,  as  I  say,  for  no  other 
reason  than  that  they  were  Jews. 

Crimes  of  Free  Republic 

And  these  crimes  (at  which  even  Russian  czardom 
had  been  horrified)  committed  in  the  new  Polish 
republic,  in  (at  length)  the  free  and  independent 
Poland  yearned  for  by  the  liberty-loving  people  of 
the  world  generally ! 

I  will  admit  to  you  I  was  worrisomely  discon¬ 
certed  when  for  your  first  Prime  Minister  you  chose 
that  great  pianist  and  puny-minded  and  peasant- 
prejudiced  Paderewski.  One  could  not  converse  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  with  that  incomparable  musician 
and  brainless  man  without  hearing  from  him  some 
stupid  calumny  of  the  Jews. 

His  selection  for  Premier  had  been  Homerically 
grotesque  had  it  not  symbolized  the  outrageous 
views  and  feelings  of  your  governing  class  toward 
3.000,000  Polish  citizens;  had  it  not  been  indicative 
of  what  followed  in  the  way  of  murder,  rape  and 
robbery;  had  it  not  been  a  presentment  of  the  gen¬ 
eral  incompetency  of  your  government  as  shown  by 
the  outcome  of  the  war  with  Russia. 

Permit  me  to  remind  Your  Excellency  that  anar¬ 
chies  in  government  or  in  any  part  of  the  people  are 
not  permitted  in  this  world.  To  the  Maker  of  this 
universe  they  are  eternally  abhorrent ;  and  from  the 
beginning  have  been  fobidden  to  be.  They  go  their 
course,  applauded — usually  by  self — for  what 
lengths  of  time  none  can  know;  for  a  long  term 
sometimes,  but  always  for  a  fixed  term  ;  and  at  last 
their  day  comes. 

Sense  of  Humanity  Needed 

It  were  inexpressibly  regrettable,  your  Excel¬ 
lency,  for  your  government  to  explode  in  something 
worse  than  in  the  Nie  Pozwalam  in  which  your  forty 
different  diets  of  old  exploded.  May  Heaven  fore- 
fend  such  a  fate.  The  world  wishes  the  Poland  of 
to-day  well. 

But  Poland  will  not,  cannot,  prosper  until  there 
shall  be  a  radical  conversion  of  your  governors,  un¬ 
til  at  worst  a  primitive  sense  of  humanity  toward 
3,000,000  Poles  comes  to  the  upper  crust  of  your 
society. 

Meanwhile  political  economists  will  be  consider¬ 
ing  how  a  nation — a  new  nation  at  that — can  thrive 
when  3,000,000  of  its  commercially  and  financially 
most  competent  citizens  are  subject  to  momentary 
murder  and  robbery;  meanwhile  Jewish  financiers 
the  world  over  will  think  thrice  ere  they  subscribe 
to  another  Polish  loan. 

Be  assured,  Your  Excellency,  of  my  profound  re¬ 
spect,  highest  esteem  and  most  distinguished  con¬ 
sideration.  BOERSIANER. 

— Nezv  York  American  ( William  Randolph 
Hearst),  August  13,  1920. 


52 


FOR  POGROMS  THAT  NEVER  HAPPENED 

The  Poles  meanwhile  are  maligned  with  the  usual* 
mercilessness  of  those  professional  mercy-mongers 
who  are  so  horrified  by  the  cruelties  of  life  that 
they  add  as  many  more  as  they  can. 

The  charge  of  imperialism  has  served  at  least  to 
give  us  a  brief  respite  from  the  anti-Polish  propa¬ 
ganda  of  certain  Jews  who  accused  Poland  of 
butchering  Jews  by  the  thousand. 

Has  everybody  forgotten  the  procession  in  New 
York  and  in  other  cities  where  mourning  was  worn 
and  dirges  were  sung  for  the  slaughtered  multitudes 
of  the  Polish  pogroms?  Has  any  one  apologized 
to  Poland  for  accusing  her  of  rivaling  Turkey,  in 
Armenia?  I  have  not  seen  the  apologies,  though 
many  eminent  Americans  exploded  a  lot  of  lofty 
eloquence  against  Poland  on  behalf  of  civilization 
and  in  protest  against  the  thousands  of  Jewish 
slain. 

If  there  had  been  any  truth  in  the  charge  the  elo¬ 
quence  would  have  been  honorable.  But  an  apol¬ 
ogy  would  be  still  more  honorable  now  that  the 
commissions  have  reported  that  the  thousands  of 
victims  are  reduced  to  285.  Ambassador  Hugh  Gib¬ 
son  branded  the  charges  as  lies,  and  Ambassador 
Morgenthau,  himself  a  Jew,  who  visited  Poland  and 
investigated,  gave  the  quietus  to  the  venomous 
campaign  of  slander.  The  respectable  Jewish  ma¬ 
jority  incurs  much  undeserved  hatred  because  of  the 
vicious  activity  of  a  few. 

— From  Imperialism  in  Reborn  Poland,  by 
Rupert  Hughes,  the  Author,  in  Nezv  York 
Times  Book  Review  and  Magazine ,  July 
18,  1920. 


THE  INCIDENT  AT  KIEF 

“At  the  final  entrainment  in  the  city  the  Jewish 
people,  moved  by  some  extraordinary  influence, 
started  shooting  from  the  windows  at  the  Poles. 
Only  by  the  issuance  of  strict  orders  were  the  men 
(Polish  soldiers)  held  back  from  retaliating.  It 
was  considered  best  to  ignore  the  sniping  and  carry 
on.  Thanks  to  the  poor  marksmanship  of  the  Reds 
and  of  their  aids  within  the  city  the  casualties  were 
relatively  few.  In  the  refugee  train,  crowded  par¬ 
ticularly  with  women  and  children,  the  excitement 
was  terrible  as  the  train  passed  under  gunfire. 
Twice  during  the  night  the  priests  gave  the  last 
rites  of  the  Church  to  the  people  crowded  into  the 
box  cars  on  the  several  trains.” 

— From  the  New  York  Times,  July  2,  1920, 
Special  Correspondence  from  Washington, 
D.  C.,  being  the  account  of  Colonel  Gaskill, 
formerly  of  the  United  States  Army,  and 
Jay  P.  Moffat,  Secretary  of  the  American 
Legation  of  Warsazv.  The  Correspondent 
said,  “The  account,  received  today,  although 
not  official,  is  regarded  as  reliable  informa¬ 
tions 


TRAGIC  SITUATION  OF  THE  JEWS 
By  MAJOR  SANFORD  GRIFFITH 

The  present  plight  of  the  Jews  in  Poland  is  not 
the  result  of  any  malicious  project  of  extermina¬ 
tion,  but  the  direct  consequence  of  the  economic 
chaos  created  by  the  war.  The  force  and  vigor  of 
the  Polish  Christian  people  comes  from  the  land. 
The  future  of  the  nation  is  assured,  whatever  the 
outcome  of  the  present  struggle,  because  70  per 
cent,  of  them  are  on  the  farms.  But  the  Polish 
Jews  have  lived  and  thrived  by  industry  and  trade, 
on  the  manipulation  of  a  delicate  machinery  which 
has  been  completely  junked  during  the  war.  Fac¬ 
tories  are  paralyzed  and  have  been  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  war.  For  a  time  trade  continued 
in  a  more  or  less  crippled  way,  and  many  Jews 
adapted  themselves  to  the  abnormal  conditions  and  „ 
continued  to  make  money.  But  the  masses,  less 
enterprising,  have  only  suffered  from  closed  mar¬ 
kets,  hindered  transportation  and  other  difficulties. 
Now  most  of  this  irregular  trade  has  ceased.  Goods 
are  not  to  be  had.  The  Poles  have  become  a  poor 
people  who  cannot  buy  even  where  the  goods  exist. 

The  low  social  state  of  the  Polish  Jews  makes 
them  particularly  helpless  to  pull  themselves  out 
of  their  present  plight.  Orthodoxy  here  has  taken 
its  worst  forms.  A  large  part  of  the  Jews  in  Po¬ 
land  know  only  the  organization  of  their  cult,  and 
this  has  too  often  been  a  narrow,  ritualistic  strait- 
jacket,  which  has  kept  the  Jews  apart  from  the 
Polish  population  about  them.  .  .  . 

The  hatred  existing  between  the  Polish  Jews  and 
the  Christians,  whatever  form  it  may  take,  is  at 
bottom  largely  economic.  It  is  none  the  less  accen¬ 
tuated  by  the  low  culture  of  the  Polish  Jews  them¬ 
selves.  This  is  most  conspicuous  in  the  gulf  which 
separates  them  from  the  large  number  of  so-called 
assimilated  Jews,  those  who  have  dropped  their  old 
Jewish  traditions  and  taken  up  Polish  ones.  Many 
of  these  assimilated  Jews  hold  positions  of  wealth 
and  influence.  But  they  are  so  conscious  of  the 
difference  between  themselves  and  their  old  kins¬ 
men,  and  so  eager  to  seem  a  part  of  the  new  set, 
that  they  have  not  responded  as  generously  as  the 
American  Jews  to  the  support  of  their  poor  kins¬ 
men  here. 

Not  only  does  the  economic  disorder  due  to  the 
war  make  the  situation  of  the  Polish  Jews  a  criti¬ 
cal  one,  but  the  evolution  of  the  economic  system 
in  Poland  tends  to  make  living  impossible  for  an 
increasing  number  of  them.  For  centuries  business 
remained  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  the  Jews.  But 
in  the  last  generation  an  increasing  number  of  Poles 
have  left  the  land  and  have  taken  an  active  part  in 
commerce  and  industry.  The  competition  here  has 
become  increasingly  acute,  and,  unlike  other  coun¬ 
tries,  the  Jew  in  Poland  has  not  the  training  suffi¬ 
cient  to  hold  his  ground. 

The  Jews  have  been  the  middlemen  of  Poland. 
They  were  the  venders  and  the  money-lenders  to 
the  farms.  But  now  the  growth  of  banks  and  co¬ 
operatives  has  deprived  them  of  much  of  this  busi¬ 
ness  as  well.  .  .  . 

— From  the  Nezv  York  Globe ,  September  1,  1920. 


53 


TO  THE  JEWISH  CITIZENS 

Are  We  Really  So  Wicked?  Are  We  So 
Bloodthirsty? 

Recent  developments  among  our  citizens  are 
pointing  to  a  reopening  of  the  old  sores,  the  old 
squabbles,  which  in  cases  have  ended  up  in  blows, 
are  daily  occurrences.  The  inevitable  result  will  be 
a  further  widening  of  the  gap  between  the  Poles 
and  the  Jews,  which  in  time  is  bound  to  have  an 
evil  bearing  upon  the  status  of  Poland  in  the  rank 
of  the  world  nations. 

Where  lies  the  fault? 

You  will  all  admit  that  right  along  your  attitude 
towards  the  Poles  in  America  has  been  antagonis¬ 
tic  ;  we  were  an  inferior  race,  as  most  of  your  young¬ 
er  generation  has  termed  us:  “Damn  Polacks.” 

Your  prominent  men,  your  press  has  been  filled 
with  vituperation  against  Poland.  You  forget 
that  a  Pole  loves  Poland  just  as  intensely  as 
a  Jew  loves  the  Jewish  race.  You  forget  that 
our  soldiers  are  fighting  a  mighty  battle,  with  a 
mighty  military  machine,  equipped  with  scythes, 
pitch-forks  and  pocket-knives,  without  clothing, 
starved.  You  must  know  that  last  winter  the  Pol¬ 
ish  soldier  marched  bare-footed,  with  not  even  a 
sock  to  protect  his  feet,  and  you  know  that  he  is 
facing  a  winter  that  will  be  worse  in  all  conditions. 
Do  you  realize  that  an  interview  like  that  published 
by  the  “New  York  American”  last  week  with  Judge 
Levy,  creates  a  sentiment  against  Poland  in  the 
very  country  that  can  help  her  most  in  her  distress, 
and  do  you  wonder  that  every  native  born  Pole, 
and  even  those  of  Polish  extraction,  are  warmed  to 
a  fever  heat  by  such  irresponsible,  wanton  state¬ 
ments. 

Poland  has  suffered  too  much.  Her  land  is  sat¬ 
urated  with  the  red  blood  of  her  sons,  who  have 
perished  during  her  100  years  of  slavery.  Freedom 
was  too  dearly  bought  to  be  lost  now,  through  the 
machinations  of  any  certain  group  or  clique  of 
people. 

I,  myself,  have  always  believed  that  the  Jewish 
problem  must  be  solved,  and  that  it  cannot  be 
solved  by  extermination  or  emigration. 

The  problem  must  be  met  squarely  by  the  Polish 
Government.  Some  kind  of  agreement  must  be 
reached.  Poland  cannot  exist  with  a  large  antago¬ 
nistic  population  within  her  borders.  Our  Polish 
Government  has  already  given  important  positions 
to  Jews  in  her  Government.  She  has  only  a  few 
days  since  appointed  Prof  Simon  S.  Askenazy  her 
second  representative  to  the  League  of  Nations. 
Our  embassy  and  consulates  have  Jews  occupying 
important  posts,  so  has  our  Diet.  The  Jews  in  Lem¬ 
berg  recently  contributed  300,000  marks  and  voted 
to  give  Poland  military  aid  and  sustain  her  in  her 
struggle  against  Bolshevism. 


Why  don’t  your  news  agencies  broadcast  facts 
.like  that  upon  the  world,  and  show  that  we  Poles, 
after  all,  are  not  so  wicked? 

Instead  they  seem  to  take  a  fanatical  pleasure  in 
disseminating  news  of  imaginary  pogroms  and 
other  anti-Polish  propaganda.  They  do  not  con¬ 
sider  that  Poland  is  a  country  racked  with  over 
six  years  of  horrible  war.  They  do  not  consider 
that  all  kinds  of  people  make  up  a  nation.  They 
do  not  mention  that  what  they  spread  to  all  news¬ 
papers  on  earth  as  a  “pogrom”  might  be  nothing 
but  a  drunken  brawl,  a  small  altercation  that  ended 
in  blows.  At  this  date  European  dispatches  pub¬ 
lish  stories  of  skirmishes  between  Poles,  Germans, 
Ukrainians,  Czechs,  Slovaks,  Lithuanians,  etc.  Yet 
none  of  these  nations  has  raised  the  cry:  “pogrom.” 

Bloodshed,  licentiousness,  robbery  is  a  natural 
outcome  of  war.  Our  American  history  will  tell 
us  of  robber  bands  after  the  Revolution:  “guerillas” 
after  the  Civil  War.  Why  condemn  a  nation  for 
the  acts  of  a  few? 

Are  we  really  murderers?  Do  we  really  enjoy 
orgies  of  blood?  Do  we  really  kill  innocent  Jews 
and  their  children?  Look  around.  Maybe  your 
next  door  neighbor  is  a  Pole.  Maybe  you 
have  a  few  in  your  employ.  Do  they  look  like 
murderers,  baby-killers ;  or  are  they  just  plain,  hard 
working  American  citizens  like  yourself? 

One  thing  more — I  myself  was  born  in  America, 
in  Newark — I  have  come  in  contact  with  Poles  from 
Galicia,  Posen,  Lemberg,  Plock  and  Warsaw.  Al¬ 
ways  the  sentiment  has  been  the  same.  They  all 
complained  of  the  Jews.  There  was  no  concrete 
reason  that  could  not  be  ironed  out.  I  often  won¬ 
dered.  So  many  people,  from  so  many  different 
sections,  yet  all  with  the  same  story.  Why?  Now 
the  Jews  are  exceptionally  good  business  people. 
They  study  trade  conditions.  When  business  is 
poor  they  want  to  know  why,  and  then  set  out  to 
get  rid  of  that  reason.  Wouldn’t  it  be  a  good  idea 
to  find  a  solution  for  this  mighty  problem  that  con¬ 
cerns  the  future  of  a  nation? 

It  cannot  be  solved  by  wild  rantings  of  a  Judge 
Levy.  That  is  only  pouring  oil  upon  the  fire. 

It  cannot  be  solved  by  breaking  windows  and  at¬ 
tacking  Poles  indiscriminately  with  shouts  of 
“Damn  Polacks.” 

It  cannot  be  solved  by  the  display  of  Jewish  flags 
on  a  day  like  last  Sunday,  “Polish  Day,”  with  no 
other  purpose  than  to  be  spiteful. 

And  it  surely  cannot  be  solved  by  propaganda, 
that  is  aimed  at  the  very  foundations  of  Poland, 
that  would  deprive  Poland  of  her  LIBERTY,  and 
once  again  make  her  a  slave. 

Frank  Kempczynski,  Editor. 

— Published  in  the  “ Kronika  ”  Polish  language 
nezvspaper  of  Nezvark,  Nezv  Jersey ,  August 
18.  1920. 


54 


The  Truth? 


London — (J.  C.  B.) — The  Warsaw  correspondent 
writes  that  the  Jews  of  that  city  celebrated  July 
the  Fourth  by  decorating  their  homes,  closing  their 
schools  and  holding  a  special  service  in  their  syna¬ 
gogues.  The  Polish  authorities  resented  the  jubila¬ 
tions  in  honor  of  America’s  independence  and  pro¬ 
hibited  all  public  manifestations .* 

— From  The  Sentinel ,  “ The  American  Jewish 
Weekly,”  Chicago,  July  23,  1920. 

There  are  some  persons  who  affect  to  believe 
that  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  gratitude  be¬ 
tween  nations.  It  would  have  been  a  wholesome 
experience  for  these  people  if  they  could  have  wit¬ 
nessed  as  I  did  this  year’s  celebration  of  the  Fourth 
of  July  in  Warsaw.  The  Bolsheviki  were  advanc¬ 
ing  on  the  city.  Their  approach  was  heralded  by 
the  reports  of  the  cruelties  and  the  devastation  that 
were  marking  their  path.  Warsaw  was  in  a  state 
of  the  greatest  anxiety. 

The  Poles,  however,  would  let  nothing  interfere 
with  the  fitting  celebration  of  America’s  birthday. 
In  the  churches  of  the  city  the  people  gathered  to 
hear  sermons  of  gratitude  to  the  American  people 
for  what  they  have  done  for  Poland.  Afterwards 
the  American  colony  assembled  in  the  great  square 
before  the  City  Hall  where  a  small  copy  of  our 
statue  of  liberty  had  been  erected.  Ten  thousand 
children,  every  one  fed  by  the  Hoover  organization 
and  clothed  by  the  American  Red  Cross,  marched 
through  the  square  cheering  America,  their  bene¬ 
factor.  In  the  evening  there  was  a  great  reception 
at  which  fervid  speeches  were  made  to  us  Ameri¬ 
cans.  But  it  is  the  children  we  shall  always  remem¬ 
ber,  and  we  know  that  whatever  happens  America 
has  a  friend  in  Europe  for  at  least  one  generation. 

By  William  C.  Boyden, 

American  Commissioner  of  the  League  of  Red  Cross 
Societies. 


*  The  italics  are  the  Editor’s. 


55 


The  Situation 


The  importance  of  the  foregoing  reports  would 
appear  more  vividly  if  at  the  same  time  was  pub¬ 
lished  the  news  which  for  nearly  two  years  has  been 
spread  over  the  whole  world  concerning  the  terrible 
Polish  “pogroms”  and  “atrocities,”  claiming  that 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  peaceful  citizens  were 
murdered  through  race  and  religious  hatred.  Such 
a  confrontation  would  show  clearly  of  what  Poland 
is  accused,  and  what  basis  she  was  discredited  and 
condemned  in  the  opinion  of  the  world,  and  what 
a  small  part  of  these  accusations  proved  to  be  true. 
It  would  also  show  that  although  90  per  cent  of 
the  accusations  were  proved  false,  nobody  with¬ 
drew  them,  and  their  authors  took  from  the  reports 
of  the  American  and  English  Missions  only  what 
could  be  used  against  Poland.  The  rest  they  passed 
over  in  silence.-  To  confront  however  the  result  of 
the  investigations  of  these  Missions  with  all  these 
accusations,  instead  of  a  small  book  several  volumes 
would  be  necessary. 

From  the  very  first  moment,  when  at  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  November,  1918,  Poland  regained  her  in¬ 
dependence,  day  after  day  and  month  after  month, 
news  of  dreadful  Jewish  pogroms  were  spread  over 
the  whole  world.  What  is  more,  no  other  news 
came  from  Poland,  as  if  the  Poles,  after  their  libera¬ 
tion  from  150  years  of  captivity,  had  nothing  better 
to  do  than  to  murder  Jews. 

This  news  found  the  more  credit  as  nobody  con¬ 
tradicted  it.  And  nobody  could  contradict  it.  The 
Polish  Government  could  not,  because  there  was 
no  Polish  Government.  When,  in  November,  1918, 
the  German  and  Austrian  authorities  ceased  to 
function  in  Poland  (the  Russian  authorities  had 
long  since  fled),  nobody  remained  to  govern,  and 
Poland,  devastated  by  four  years  of  war,  found  her¬ 
self  without  government,  without  administration, 
without  tribunals,  without  police  and  without  an 
army.  And  when  the  Polish  Government  arose  it 
still  could  not  deny  the  pogroms,  for  it  first  had  to 
create  an  administration  that  would  restore  order 
and  investigate  all  excesses.  All  this  was  accom¬ 
plished  in  an  astonishingly  short  period,  but  even 
then  the  government  could  not  occupy  itself  with 
a  press  campaign,  firstly  because  it  learned  of  these 
accusations  very  late  in  the  day  (Poland  was  virtu¬ 
ally  cut  off  from  the  world),  secondly,  because  in 
addition  to  creating  the  whole  machinery  of  State, 
it  had  to  create  an  army  in  order  to  repulse  invasion 
on  four  fronts. 

And  so  the  news  of  dreadful  “pogroms”  penetrated 
everywhere,  spread  systematically  via  Berlin  and 
Vienna,  and  by  special  bureaux  in  Stockholm  and 
Copenhagen,  which  from  day  to  day  furnished  news 
to  Zionist  organizations  possessing  sufficient  means 
and  influence  to  give  it  a  world-wide  publication. 
And  the  news  was  frightful.  It  told  of  thousands 


of  Jews  not  only  beaten  and  robbed,  but  murdered 
and  burned  alive.  As  these  facts  were  confirmed 
by  “eye-witnesses”  it  is  no  wonder  they  aroused 
general  indignation.  And  when  Mr.  Israel  Cohen, 
the  Secretary  of  the  London  Zionist  Organization, 
after  investigating  the  matter  on  the  spot  published 
in  English  papers  and  at  a  meeting  in  Queen’s  Hall 
in  London  that  such  atrocities  had  taken  place  in 
Poland  in  130  towns,  indignation  meetings  and 
funereal  processions  began  all  over  the  world. 

At  this  point  the  Polish  Government  began  to 
issue  denials  of  these  crimes,  which  called  forth 
greater  indignation :  “It  is  not  enough  that  they 
murder  innocent  Jews,  in  addition  they  lie.”  For 
of  necessity  the  denials  were  unaccompanied  by 
proofs.  When  an  “eye-witness”  declared  that  he 
counted  2,300  Jewish  corpses,  how  prove  that  it 
was  untrue  and  that  these  corpses  are  living.  Ex¬ 
cited  public  opinion  demanded  negative  proof  from 
Poland,  but  did  not  demand  proofs  from  her  ac¬ 
cusers.  The  news  of  “pogroms”  were  so  established 
all  over  the  world  that  the  denials  of  the  numerous 
foreign  correspondents  who  began  to  visit  Poland 
found  no  faith.  What  is  more,  when  after  December 
1918  the  various  missions  of  the  Allies  began  to 
arrive  in  Poland,  and  the  members  of  these  mis¬ 
sions  also  began  to  deny  the  pogroms,  even  their 
testimony  was  regarded  with  suspicion.  Jewish 
pogroms  in  Poland  had  become  a  dogma  so  firmly 
established  that  denials  were  useless. 

When  therefore  Mr.  Paderewski,  at  that  time 
Polish  Premier,  requested  the  Governments  of  the 
Allies  to  send  a  special  mission  to  Poland  to  find 
out  the  truth,  an  unheard  of  thing  happened;  the 
American  as  well  as  the  English  Government  came 
to  the  conviction  that  in  order  that  the  reports 
should  find  credit  a  Jew  must  stand  at  the  head  of 
the  mission.  Christian  testimony  did  not  appear  to 
be  sufficient.  This  aroused  among  the  Poles  an 
astonishment  as  great  as  would  have  been  felt  by 
Polish  Jews,  if  at  the  head  of  an  American  mission 
had  been  placed,  for  instance,  Congressman  Kleczka, 
an  equally  honored  and  respected  American  citizen, 
but  suspected  of  partiality  because  of  his  Polish 
descent.  And  as  humour  never  loses  its  rights  even 
in  the  most  dramatic  moments,  it  was  a  standing 
joke  in  the  Polish  Press  that  at  the  head  of  the  mission 
on  the  question  of  the  lynching  of  negroes  in  Amer¬ 
ica  should  be  a  colored  gentleman  from  Haiti  and 
a  full  blooded  delegate  from  Central  Africa. 

But  even  thus,  with  Jews  at  its  head,  the  task 
of  this  mission  was  not  easy,  for  the  question  of 
pogroms  in  Poland  had  taken  on  such  a  character 
that  even  the  testimony  of  Jews  was  accepted  only 
when  it  was  against  Poland.  A  Polish  Jew  in 
Stockholm  was  brutally  convinced  of  this  when  he 
was  beaten  and  ejected  from  an  indignation  meeting 
for  daring  to  question  the  truth  of  the  accusations ; 


56 


Mr.  L.  Pilichowski,  President  of  the  Union  of  Polish 
Jews  in  England,  at  the  meeting  in  Queen’s  Hall 
(April  9th,  19)  was  greeted  with  insulting  cries  and 
shouted  down  when  he  expressed  his  conviction  that 
the  present  Polish  Government  has  every  desire  to 
establish  tolerable  relations  with  the  Jews;  Mr. 
Diamand,  an  eminent  Jewish  member  of  the  Polish 
Parliament — and  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Socialist 
Party,  was  accused  of  treason  by  a  Zionist  paper 
for  expressing  a  similar  opinion. 

In  this  difficult  situation,  the  two  chiefs  of  the 
missions  for  investigating  pogroms  in  Poland  chose 
different  ways,  Mr.  Morgenthau,  an  American  citi¬ 
zen  of  the  Jewish  faith,  did  not  renounce  his  nat¬ 
ural  sympathy  with  his  cobelievers,  but  at  the  same 
time  strove  to  be  an  impartial  judge,  not  the  rep¬ 
resentative  of  one  side  only.  The  British  Jew, 
Sir  Stuart  Samuel,  did  not  take  so  much  trouble, 
and  the  manner  in  which  his  investigations  were 
carried  out  left  in  Poland  the  impression  of  an  at¬ 
torney  gathering  materials  for  an  act  of  accusation, 
rather  than  of  a  judge. 

The  task  was  in  any  case  so  difficult,  and  the 
whole  atmosphere  so  permeated  with  the  bitterness 
of  accusations  and  the  poison  of  hate,  that  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  both  missions,  the  American  as  well  as  the 
English,  were  unable,  in  spite  of  their  sincere  desire, 
to  make  a  common  report.  Mr.  Morgenthau  wrote 
a  separate  report,  and  General  Jadwin  and  Mr. 
H.  H.  Johnson,  two  Christian  members  of  his  mis¬ 
sion,  wrote  also  a  separate  report  while  Sir  Stuart 
Samuel’s  report  had  to  be  sandwiched  between  a 
letter  by  Sir  H.  Rumbold,  the  British  Minister  in 
Poland,  and  the  report  of  Mr.  P.  Wright — both 
constituting  a  severe  criticism  of  the  report  of  Sir 
Stuart  Samuel. 

In  spite  of  their  diversity  however,  these  reports 
possess  great  documentary  value,  for  they  represent 
one  question  from  different  standpoints.  They 
would  have  to  be  recognized  as  the  final  revelation 
of  the  whole  truth  if  they  were  completed  by  the 
remarks  of  a  man  occupying  the  same  position  to¬ 
wards  the  Polish  nation  as  Sir  Samuel  occupied 
towards  the  Jews.  In  such  a  case  the  matter  could 
have  been  considered  by  all  sides  as  satisfactorily 
cleared  up. 

But  just  as  they  are,  these  reports  give  a  pretty 
complete  picture  of  the  Jewish  problem  in  Poland, 
considered  as  a  whole. 

In  his  letter  of  June  30th,  1919,  Secretary  Lansing 
defined  the  work  of  the  mission  as :  “investigation 
of  the  various  massacres,  pogroms,  and  other  ex¬ 
cesses  alleged  to  have  taken  place,  the  economic 
boycott,  and  other  methods  of  discrimination 
against  the  Jewish  race,”  afterwards  adding  that 
“the  establishment  of  the  truth  in  regard  to  those 
matters ....  is  merely  for  the  purpose  of  seeking  to 
discover  the  reason  lying  behind  such  excesses  and 
discriminations  with  a  view  to  finding  a  possible 
remedy.” 

These  three  points:  1st,  the  truth  about  the 
pogroms  etc.,  2nd  the  reason  lying  behind  such  ex¬ 
cesses,  and  3rd  the  possible  remedy,  are  presented 


in  a  different  manner  not  only  by  the  two  missions, 
but  also  by  the  members  of  each  mission. 

/ — Pogroms ,  Atrocities ,  Excesses 

Although  the  reports  of  the  members  of  the  two 
missions  often  differ  in  the  description  of  anti- 
Jewish  incidents  in  Poland,  there  is  not  much  dif¬ 
ference  in'  the  final  result  of  their  investigations. 
To  a  certain  degree  Sir  Stuart  Samuel  is  an  ex¬ 
ception,  recognising  as  “proved  to  my  satisfaction” 
details  not  quoted  at  all  as  proved  by  any  of  the  other 
members  of  the  two  missions. 

The  final  result  of  the  investigations  of  both  mis¬ 
sions  is  that  during  the  first  five  critical  months 
there  were  about  280  killed  in  the  anti-Jewish  ex¬ 
cesses  (Morgenthau)  ;  that  the  number  of  killed 
“has  not  exceeded  300”  (  Jadwin-Johnson)  ;  that  the 
number  of  killed  was  at  least  348  (Sir  S.  Samuel)  ; 
and  “not  more  than  200  or  300  unjustly  killed” 
(Wright).  At  the  same  time  Sir  H.  Rumbold 
divides  these  excesses  into  two  categories:  those 
“which  were  perpetrated  in  Poland  proper  in  the 
course  of  which  18  Jews  lost  their  lives;”  the  others 
being  those  which  occurred  in  the  war  zone  during 
the  campaign. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  newspaper  reports 
of  pogroms  which  aroused  such  world-wide  indigna¬ 
tion,  mentioned  thousands  of  Jews  killed  in  each  of 
the  130  Polish  towns  said  to  have  been  the  scene  of 
these  “atrocities.” 

The  disturbances  in  Poland  proper  happened 
during  the  first  moments  of  her  independence,  when 
there  was  neither  government,  police  nor  army, 
and  the  starving  population  was  free  to  attack 
stores  where  they  believed  provisions  to  be  hidden. 
They  did  not  seek  Jews,  but  food.  In  any  country 
in  the  world  such  excesses  might  have  taken  on 
greater  proportions  if  the  police  ceased  to  act  at 
the  very  moment  when  the  hungry  population,  un¬ 
able  to  buy  food  anywhere,  seized  all  means  of  get¬ 
ting  it.  At  to  the  incidents  in  the  war  zone,  it  must 
be  remembered  that  reports  confirm  in  part  that 
the  Jews  fought  on  the  side  of  the  enemies  of  Poland 
at  the  most  critical  moment,  and  in  part  that  they 
were  suspected  of  this  with  more  or  less  justice.  If 
it  is  recalled  that  after  driving  the  Russians  from 
Galicia  the  German  and  Austrian  armies  hung  in 
Galicia  30  thousand  people  suspected  of  sympathy 
with  the  enemy  it  will  be  easy  to  understand  the 
words  of  Mr.  Wright,  who,  in  speaking  of  the  num¬ 
ber  of  killed  in  these  conditions,  said:  “One  would 
be  too  many,  but  taking  these  casualties  as  a  stand¬ 
ard  with  which  to  measure  the  excesses  committed 
against  them  (the  Jews),  I  am  more  astonished  at 
their  smallness  than  their  greatness.” 

As  to  the  responsibility  for  these  excesses,  even 
Sir  Stuart  Samuel  said  that  (with  the  exception  of 
the  incidents  in  Lvov,  Lida  and  Wilna)  “the  mil¬ 
itary  authorities  endeavoured  to  restrict  the  action 
of  the  soldiers  as  much  as  possible,”  and  that  “speak- 
ing  generally,  as  the  civil  authority  has  been  able 
to  make  its  power  effective,  so  the  position  in  the 


57 


rear  of  the  troops  has  become  more  and  more  satis¬ 
factory.” 

Other  members  of  the  two  missions  are  more 
decided.  Mr.  Morgenthau  says:  “It  would  be.  . .  .un¬ 
fair  to  condemn  the  Polish  nation  as  a  whole  for 
the  violence  committed  by  uncontrolled  troops  or 
local  mobs.”  General  Jadwin  and  Mr.  H.  H.  John¬ 
son  state  that  “none  of  these  excesses  were  in¬ 
stigated  or  approved  by  any  responsible  govern¬ 
mental  authority,  civil  or  military,  “that  every¬ 
where  the  authorities  ordered  investigations  and 
repression,  that  even  in  the  sad  incidents  in  Pinsk 
“no  share  can  be  attributed  to  any  military  official 
higher  up,  to  any  of  the  Polish  civil  officials,  or  to 
the  few  Poles  resident  in  that  district  of  White 
Russia.”  Mr.  P.  Wright  says  that  the  excesses  took 
place  at  a  period  when  “there  was  not  much  law 
for  anyone,”  and  adds  that  these  events  are  small 
and  trivial  in  comparison  with  the  horrors  of 
Bolshevism,  the  atrocities  of  the  Ukrainian  rising, 
and  the  brutalities  of  the  struggle  between  the 
Germans  and  the  Russians.  In  the  opinion  of  Sir 
H.  Rumbold  “in  view  of  the  weakness  of  the  central 
administration,  and  the  original  want  of  discipline 
in  the  Polish  army,  it  would  appear  that  the  authori¬ 
ties  could  not  be  held  responsible  for  the  excesses”; 
that  the  condition  of  the  Jews  in  Poland  “bad  as  it 
may  have  been  or  may  still  be,  has  been  far  better 
than  in  most  of  the  surrounding  countries.”  And 
Sir  H.  Rumbold  concludes:  “It  is  giving  the  Jews 
very  little  real  assistance  to  single  out,  as  is  some¬ 
times  done,  for  reprobation  and  protest,  the  country 
where  they  have  perhaps  suffered  least.” 

II — Causes  of  the  Anti-Jewish  Movement  in  Poland 

The  reports  of  the  two  missions  cite  many  causes 
which  produced  dislike  of  the  Jews  in  Poland.  No 
report,  however,  attributes  it  to  religious  prejudice, 
nor  considers  the  excesses  as  religious  persecution 
and  a  lack  of  religious  tolerance.  This  is  a  point  to 
be  emphasized. 

The  report  of  Sir  Stuart  Samuel  differs  from  all 
the  others  in  that  he  does  not  see  any  other  causes 
for  this  dislike  except  perhaps  the  malice  of  Poles 
revenging  themselves  for  the  election  of  Mr. 
Jagiello  as  deputy  for  Warsaw.  It  is  difficult  to 
consider  as  a  real  cause  the  phenomenal  discovery 
of  Sir  Stuart  that  the  Jews  represent  the  only  mid¬ 
dle-class  in  Poland,  which  for  the  rest  has  only  an 
aristocracy  and  a  peasantry  (?).  He  mentions  also 
as  a  cause  of  unjust  reproaches  the  use  of  the  Ger¬ 
man  language  and  the  close  relations  with  the  Ger¬ 
mans  during  the  war,  as  well  as  the  suspected  taint 
of  Bolshevism,  at  the  same  time  remarking:  “al¬ 
though  it  should  not  be  matter  of  surprise  if  some 
of  the  younger  generation  of  educated  Jews,  finding 
all  avenues  of  advancement  and  fair  play  barred, 
should  be  found  ready  to  listen  to  proposals  for 
freedom  and  equality  of  opportunity.”  It  is  thus 
Sir  Stuart  defines  Bolshevism,  differing  fundamen¬ 
tally  in  this  respect  from'  Mr.  P.  Wright,  who 
is  of  the  opinion  that  “the  Bolshevik  administration 
was  a  parody  of  the  Tsarist  administration,  which 
itself  was  little  better  than  a  parody,”  and  confirms 


the  large  part  taken  by  the  Jews  in  this  administra¬ 
tion. 

Mr.  Morgenthau  looks  deeper,  and  finds  political 
as  well  as  economic  causes,  showing  circumstances 
which  inclined  the  Polish  soldier  to  look  upon  the 
Jews  as  aliens,  and  hostile  to  Polish  nationality,  show¬ 
ing  the  chaotic  state  of  affairs  in  Poland,  the  social 
unrest  after  the  war  which  stimulated  patriotic  out¬ 
bursts,  sentiments  incompatible  with  the  nationalist 
declarations  of  some  Jewish  organizations,  their  de¬ 
mands  for  autonomy  and  their  attitude  during  the 
Conference  in  Paris.  General  Jadwin  and  Mr.  John¬ 
son  add  to  this  the  abnormal  concentration  of  Jews 
in  Poland,  their  readiness  to  go  with  the  winning  side, 
alleged  speculations  in  foodstuffs,  denunciations  to  the 
Germans,  their  conduct  toward  the  enemies  of  Poland, 
and  the  danger  of  anti-Polish  propaganda  which  has 
its  source  in  Germany. 

Mr.  P.  Wright  gives  many  reasons  for  the  strained 
relations  existing  between  the  Poles  and  the  Jews. 
Some  are  of  an  economic  nature.  The  Jews  in  Poland 
are  small  middlemen,  hardly  ever  producers,  capitalists 
of  a  few  shillings  for  whom  there  is  every  year  less 
and  less  room.  They  are  unfit  for  the  modern  eco¬ 
nomic  world,  and  are  driven  out  by  modern  methods. 
“Polish  workmen  will  not  work  with  people  whose 
personal  habits  are  so  unclean.”  “They  are  also  driven 
into  all  sorts  of  illicit  and  fraudulent  practices,  and  I 
think  the  Poles  are  right  when  they  complain  that 
too  large  a  proportion  of  such  offenses  are  Jewish.” 
Mr.  Wright  then  gives  political  reasons.  The  Litwaki 
sent  by  Russia  into  Poland,  openly  professed  them¬ 
selves  partisans  of  conquering  Russia,  organized  the 
Polish  Jews  and  the  Jewish  Press,  which  fought 
against  Polish  autonomy.  During  the  war  it  was 
with  Jews  that  the  Germans  set  up  their  organization 
to  squeeze  and  drain  Poland ;  they  were  their  instru¬ 
ment.  They  fought  with  the  Bolsheviki,  often  joining 
them  because  of  the  opportunity  of  doing  business, 
especially  speculation  in  food.  Germanized,  Russified, 
with  Bolshevist  connections,  they  appeared  to  the  Poles 
as  representatives  of  their  oppressors.  “It  had  seemed 
certain  that  one  of  the  two,  the  German  or  the  Russian 
Empire,  must  win,  and  that  the  Jews  who  had  their 
money  on  both  were  safe ;  but  the  despised  Poland 
came  in  first.  Even  now  the  Jews  can  hardly  believe 
in  its  resurrection,  and  one  of  them  told  me  it  still 
seems  to  him  a  dream.” 

Mr.  Wright  made  a  thorough  study  of  the  social  con¬ 
ditions  of  Polish  Jews,  and  his  unexpected  conclusions 
are  that  eastern  Jews  with  their  own  language,  dress, 
calendar,  with  their  narrow  ritualism  based  on  literally 
taken  texts  of  books  which  rule  their  whole  life,  have 
a  civilization  which  resembles  the  civilization  of  Islam, 
not  only  far  removed  from  European  civilization,  but 
a  civilization  of  the  fifth  century  before  Christ.  The 
eastern  Jews  are  “not  civilized  in  our  sense  of  the 
word,  and  it  is  impossible  for  the  Poles  to  amalgamate 
with  them,  and  difficult  to  mix  with  them  or  even  to 
frame  common  laws  with  them.”  “The  semi-assimila¬ 
tion  of  the  larger  masses  of  the  eastern  Jews  is  the 
very  cause  of  the  evil.”  It  stimulates  their  nationalism. 
They  will  not  be  governed  by  men  who  are  not  of 
their  race,  language  and  religion.  “They  protest  they 


58 


are  not  Poles  ;  they  are  only  Jews,  but  Polish  subjects.” 
The  result  is  the  demand  for  a  national  autonomy : 
all  the  Jews  in  Poland  should  figure  on  a  separate 
register,  they  should  have  a  representative  body  with 
extensive  powers,  separate  budget  and  organization, 
their  deputies  to  the  Polish  Parliament  elected  by  Jews 
only,  the  right  to  use  Yiddish  in  legal  proceedings, 
schools,  etc.  This  14  per  cent,  of  the  population  of 
Poland,  with  its  antiquated  Asiatic  civilization,  should 
be  organized  for  all  time  as  a  separate  national  body, 
safe  from  the  assimilating  influence  of  the  remaining 
86  per  cent,  of  the  population — all  this  is  “the  very 
cause  of  the  evil.” 

Ill — Possible  Remedies 

In  speaking  of  possible  remedies  Mr.  Morgenthau  is 
sparing  of  words,  but  touches  on  many  fundamental 
Ideas.  “To  formulate  a  solution  of  the  Jewish  problem 
will  necessitate  a  careful  and  broad  study,  not  only 
of  the  economic  condition  of  the  Jews,  but  also  of  the 
•exact  requirements  of  Poland.  These  requirements 
will  not  be  definitely  known  prior  to  the  fixation  of 
Polish  boundaries,  and  the  final  regulation  of  Polish 
relations  with  Russia,  with  which  the  largest  share 
of  trade  was  previously  conducted.  It  is  recommended 
that  the  League  of  Nations,  or  the  larger  nations  in¬ 
terested  in  this  problem,  send  to  Poland  a  commission 
consisting  of  recognized  industrial,  educational,  agri¬ 
cultural,  economic  and  vocational  experts,  which 
should  remain  there  as  long  as  necessary  to  examine 
the  problem  at  its  source.”  On  another  page  he  says : 
“When  the  boundaries  of  Poland  are  once  fixed,  and 
the  internal  organization  of  the  country  is  perfected, 
the  Polish  Government  will  be  increasingly  able  to 
protect  all  classes  of  Polish  citizenry.”  In  the  opinion 
of  Mr.  Morgenthau  “The  minority  must  be  encouraged 
to  participate  with  their  whole  strength  and  influence 
in  making  Poland  the  great  unified  country  that  is 
required  in  Central  Europe  to  combat  the  tremendous 
•dangers  that  confront  it.  Poland  must  promptly  de¬ 
velop  its  full  strength,  and  by  its  conduct  first  merit 
and  then  receive  the  unstinted  moral,  financial  and 
economic  support  of  all  the  world  which  will  ensure 
the  future  success  of  the  Republic.”  He  mentions  the 
new  Polish  Constitution  now  in  the  making,  the  gen¬ 
erous  scope  of  which  “has  already  been  indicated  by 
the  special  treaty  with  the  Allied  and  Associated 
Powers,  in  which  Poland  has  affirmed  its  fidelity  to 
the  principles  of  liberty  and  justice  and  the  rights 
of  minorities,  and  we  may  be  certain  that  Poland  will 
be  faithful  to  its  pledge,  which  is  so  conspicuously  in 
harmony  with  the  nation’s  best  traditions.”  And  Mr. 
Morgenthau  concludes :  “There  must  be  but  one  class 
of  citizens  in  Poland,  all  members  of  which  enjoy 
•equal  rights  and  render  equal  duties.” 

General  Jadwin  and  Mr.  Johnson  subscribe  to  the 
conclusions  of  Mr.  Morgenthau,  insisting  on  the  neces¬ 
sity  of  “one  and  only  one  class  of  citizens,”  and  ad¬ 
vising  Poland  and  Jews  to  “keep  in  mind  American  ex¬ 
perience  in  public  school  development,  and  carefully 
to  weigh  the  question  whether  the  permanency  of  the 
separate  school  plan  will  be  advisable.”  They  believe 
that  “once  the  military  threat  against  Poland  is  re¬ 


moved  and  the  territorial  uncertainty  of  the  Republic 
is  ended,  the  nation  will  be  able  to  concentrate  its 
energies  on  internal  problems  and,  by  the  course  of 
natural  development,  create  a  governmental  system  in¬ 
suring  equality,  protection  and  prosperity  to  all  ele¬ 
ments  of  its  population.  The  mission  thoroughly  be¬ 
lieves  that  Poland  has  the  raw  materials  of  citizenship 
quite  equal  to  this  accomplishment.” 

General  Jadwin  and  Mr.  Johnson  conclude  by  en¬ 
umerating  “the  duties  of  the  outside  world  toward 
Poland”  concerning  the  establishment  of  the  frontiers, 
protection  against  external  interference,  material  aid 
in  the  nature  of  food,  clothing  and  raw  materials, 
study  of  over-population  or  under-industrialization, 
campaign  by  League  of  Nations  of  universal  education 
in  ideals  of  democracy  and  the  disinterested  counsel 
of  the  allied  democracies  based  on  their  experience. 

Mr.  P.  Wright,  like  all  the  other  members  of  the 
two  missions,  sees  the  principal  remedy  in  the  opening 
up  of  Russia  to  the  Jews:  “If  Russia  is  opened  to  the 
Jews,  the  Polish  Jewish  question  may  solve  itself. 
The  Jews  who  were  pumped  into  Poland  by  the  Tsarist 
Government  will  stream  back  there,  and  now  sweep 
along  with  them  very  many  of  the  Polish  Jews.”  Be¬ 
sides  this,  as  a  logical  consequence  of  his  opinion  con¬ 
cerning  the  low  social  level  of  the  eastern  Jews  and 
their  unfitness  for  modern  conditions,  Mr.  Wright,  in 
deep  sympathy  with  the  “immense  mass  of  squalid 
and  helpless  poverty,”  sees  the  necessity  of  educating 
the  eastern  Jewish  masses,  of  preaching  to  them  “the 
gospel  of  the  toothbrush,”  of  cleanliness  and  of  teach¬ 
ing  them  modern  methods  of  earning  a  livelihood. 
He  insists  that  western  Jews  may  in  this  respect  help 
their  unfortunate  eastern  brethren,  who  “look  with 
suspicion  on  anything  that  does  not  come  from  their 
co-religionists  and  Rabbis.” 

Sir  S.  Samuel,  always  original,  differs  widely  from 
the  other  members  of  the  missions.  Besides  the  open¬ 
ing  of  Russia,  facilities  of  emigration,  introduction 
of  new  industries,  equality  of  rights,  and  remedies 
qualified  as  unsuitable  by  Sir  H.  Rumbold,  Sir  Stuart 
sees  only  one  other  efficient  remedy — the  police.  The 
Polish  Government  must  be  urged  to  carry  out  the 
clauses  of  the  Minority  Treaty  in  a  spirit  of  sympathy 
with  the  Jews  (this  urging  for  sympathy  is  curious), 
boycotts  must  be  decreed  illegal  and  all  publications 
advocating  boycotts  suspended.  Sir  Stuart  overrates 
the  power  of  the  police  and  the  efficiency  of  press 
gagging  methods.  He  does  not  remember  that  the  * 
English  authorities,  at  that  periol  all-powerful  in  Ire¬ 
land,  were  unable  to  protect  from  such  proceedings  a 
certain  Captain  Boycott,  who  was  compelled  to  leave 
Ireland,  such  proceedings  being  thereafter  known  as 
“boycotting.”  Sir  Stuart  Samuel  appears  to  be  un¬ 
aware  that  a  remedy,  to  be  efficient,  must  influence  the 
feelings  of  the  population,  and  the  sole  prohibition 
of  giving  expression  to  these  feelings  would  be  no 
remedy  at  all ;  on  the  contrary,  it  would  stimulate  ill- 
feeling  against  the  Jews  if  the  Polish  Government 
were  urged  to  suppress,  for  the  benefit  of  the  Jews, 
publications  expressing  the  real  sentiment  of  the  Polish 
people.  Such  a  prohibition  would  be  worse  than  use¬ 
less — the  sentiment  itself  should  be  changed. 

It  is  easy  to  draw  one  logical  deduction  from  Sir 


59 


Stuart’s  suggestion.  If  political  boycott  should  be 
suppressed,  it  could  not  be  limited  to  anti-Jewish  boy¬ 
cott.  How  about  the  anti-Polish  boycott?  Sir  Stuart 
would,  of  course,  find  absurd  a  demand  to  suppress  the 
boycott  of  the  Polish  State  and  the  Polish  nation,  ad¬ 
vocated  with  such  unanimity  and  persistence  all  over 
the  world.  No  Pole  has  ever  expressed  such  an  ex¬ 
travagant  demand. 

Conclusion 

There  are  two  circumstances  which  give  a  tragic 
stamp  to  the  relations  between  the  Poles  and  the  Jews. 
Firstly,  this  dispute  is  not  a  historical  necessity,  it  is 
not  a  natural  consequence  of  centuries-old  relations, 
but  of  an  accidental  outside  cause,  which  fell  on  Poland 
in  spite  of  the  tendencies  and  efforts  of  her  inhabi¬ 
tants.  A  second  tragic  circumstance  is  that  this  con¬ 
flict  began  with  such  a  lurid  outburst  at  the  very  mo¬ 
ment  when  Poland  had  regained  her  independence, 
and  again  took  up  the  thread  of  her  history  as  a  State, 
a  history  whose  annals  record  through  centuries  tra¬ 
ditions  of  tolerance  and  liberty. 

Before  her  dismemberment,  when  Poland  was  an 
independent  State,  the  relations  between  Poles  and 
Jews  were  satisfactory.  Poland  earned  the  title  of 
“ Paradisns  Judaeorum  ”  and  although  Jews  flocked  to 
Poland  from  other  countries  where  they  suffered  per¬ 
secution,  there  was  every  prospect  of  their  assimila¬ 
tion  as  equal  citizens.  Religious  tolerance  was  such 
that  there  were  no  religious  dissensions,  and  national 
dissensions  did  not  exist.  In  view  of  the  traditional 
exclusiveness  of  the  Jewish  community  the  process  of 
assimilation  proceeded  slowly,  but  it  proceeded,  and 
was  not  interrupted  even  by  the  Partitions.  If  the 
literature  of  a  nation  reflects  its  character,  Polish  liter¬ 
ature  is  perhaps  the  only  literature  representing  Jews 
as  national  patriots,  headed  by  Jankiel  in  the  national 
epics  by  Mickiewicz,  Poland’s  greatest  poet.  This  pro¬ 
cess  reached  its  zenith  in  1862,  when  A.  Wielopolski 
was  at  the  head  of  the  administration  of  Congress 
Poland,  and  he,  a  Pole,  proclaimed  the  emancipation 
and  equal  rights  of  the  Jews,  and  this  was  immediately 
put  in  practice  by  Poles,  not  only  politically,  but  so¬ 
cially.  The  consequence  of  this  was  that  Jews  took 
part  in  the  Polish  insurrection.  But  the  insurrection 
was  suppressed,  the  remainder  of  Poland’s  autonomy 
withdrawn  and  the  rights  of  the  Jews  restricted.  This 
was  the  act  of  Russia.  And  what  is  more,  Russia, 
wishing  to  rid  herself  of  Jews,  began  to  send  them  to 
Poland.  Poland  could  absorb  socially  her  own  Jews, 
bound  to  her  by  the  traditions  of  centuries.  She  could 
not  assimilate  this  foreign  surplus.  In  the  sixteenth 
century,  the  period  of  Poland’s  greatest  prosperity, 
three  and  one-half  per  cent,  of  the  population  were 
Jews.  At  present  the  Jews  represent  14  per  cent,  of 
the  population.  In  a4dition,  these  arrivals  brought 
with  them,  not  only  a  stubborn  separatism,  but  hatred 
of  Poland.  The  result  was  the  appearance  in  Poland 
of  anti-Semitism- — a  guest  hitherto  unknown.  Anti- 
Jewish  sentiments  increased  when  the  inimical  attitude 
of  the  “Litvak”  and  their  adherents  was  so  glaringly 
revealed  during  the  Great  War.  It  increased  still 
more  when  the  resuscitation  of  independent  Poland 
was  greeted  by  an  organized,  universal  choir  of  hostile 
voices,  discrediting  the  reborn  nation. 


This  outburst  of  hatred  was  not  justified  by  the  so- 
called  “pogroms,”  reduced  to  the  real  proportions,  of 
which  there  were  fewer  victims  than  from  the  auto¬ 
mobile  casualties  in  New  York  during  the  same  period. 
On  the  other  hand  these  hostile  voices  from  abroad 
aroused  great  irritation  in  Poland,  from  which  suffered 
the  poor  masses  of  Jews  in  daily  contact  with  Poles,, 
with  whom  they  have  to  live. 

The  members  of  the  two  missions  propose  different 
remedies  for  this  state  of  affairs.  Some  of  them — 
such  as  the  establishment  of  Polish  frontiers,  peace,, 
the  opening  of  emigration  to  Russia,  aid  in  economic 
development,  etc. — find  unanimous  approval. 

There  is  also  general  unanimity  as  to  the  necessity 
of  equal  rights  for  Jews,  to  which  also  all  Poles  agree. 
In  this  respect,  nevertheless,  there  are  certain  differ¬ 
ences  of  opinion  of  which  adherents  of  equal  rights 
are  not  always  conscious.  Equal  rights,  although  con¬ 
firmed  in  Articles  of  the  Constitution  and  guaranteed 
by  treaties,  cannot  really  become  part  of  the  State 
organism  until  mutual  hostility  is  removed.  Mr.  Mor- 
genthau  concludes  his  report  with  the  words :  “There 
must  be  but  one  class  of  citizens  in  Poland,  all  mem¬ 
bers  of  which  enjoy  equal  rights  and  render  equal 
duties.”  Even  anti-Jewish  Polish  papers  agree  to  this,, 
but  add :  “Let  the  Jews  do  their  duty,  and  then  we  will 
consider  them  as  having  equal  rights”;  the  Jews  say: 
“When  we  feel  we  have  equal  rights  we  will  fulfill 
our  duties.”  Are  we  to  wait  and  see  who  begins  first? 
No,  this  hostility  must  be  removed,  and  relations 
brought  about  in  which  such  a  dilemma  would  be  im¬ 
possible. 

This  cannot,  however,  be  attained  by  the  compulsory 
methods  so  dear  to  Sir  Stuart  Samuel.  The  Govern¬ 
ment,  the  Polish  people,  declare  themselves  ready  to 
co-operate  in  order  to  arrive  at  harmony  and  concord. 
Let  us  suppose,  however,  that  this  is  not  the  case.  Po¬ 
land  is  a  democratic  State,  and  86  per  cent,  of  her 
population  may  impose  their  will  on  the  Government. 
Let  us  suppose  against  all  probability,  that  the  will  of 
the  population  is  contrary  to  the  clauses  of  the  Minor¬ 
ity  Treaty.  What  then?  If  the  League  of  Nations  in 
defense  of  Jews  applied  forcible  measures  to  Poland, 
it  might  obtain  momentary  results,  but  such  action 
would  certainly  not  improve  internal  relations  between 
Jews  and  Poles;  it  would  be  more  likely  to  create  an 
atmosphere  of  bitterness  favorable  to  the  birth  of  real 
pogroms.  With  the  Minoritv  Treaty  or  without  it, 
the  sincerity  of  the  concord  is  the  essential  point  of 
the  problem,  not  a  concord  obtained  by  compulsion.  A 
sincere  concord  is  barred  by  the  demand  of  some  Jews 
for  national  autonomy.  With  such  an  autonomy  there 
would  be  not  one,  but  two  classes  of  citizens,  con¬ 
demned  to  eternal  discord :  one  representing  86  per 
cent,  of  Christian  citizens  with  normal  rights,  the  other 
the  14  per  cent  of  Jewish  citizens  enjoying  special 
privileges  in  addition  to  normal  rights. 

Moreover,  the  fixing  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  Jew¬ 
ish  minority  would  hinder  the  reconciliation  and  a  har¬ 
monious  co-existence.  This  can  be  attained  only  by 
removing  the  barriers  dividing  these  two  groups  of 
citizens,  and  not  by  rendering  them  permanent. 

Mr.  Wright,  in  his  report,  represents  the  intellectual 
and  cultural  state  of  eastern  Jews  as  such;  that  “it  is 
impossible  for  the  Poles  to  amalgamate  with  them,  and 


60 


difficult  to  mix  with  them,  or  even  tp  frame  common 
laws  for  them.”  To  render  these  differences  perma¬ 
nent  would  be  to  make  impossible  a  friendly  co¬ 
existence. 

In  calling  attention  to  this,  General  Jadwin  and  Mr. 
Johnson  point  to  American  experience  in  public  school 
development.  This  is  based  on  Americanization,  not 
interfering  in  any  way  with  the  freedom  and  equality 
of  citizens,  but  moulding  them  into  one  vital  organism. 
Similarly  Polonization  on  the  same  broad  and  liberal 
principles,  must  form  the  basis  of  Polish-Jewish  rela¬ 
tions  if  Poland  also  is  to  be  a  vital  organism.  To  re¬ 
move  all  that  divides,  and  to  promote  all  that  ap¬ 
proaches  and  conciliates — that  is  the  principal  task. 
National,  like  human  organisms,  cannot  suffer  the 
presence  of  foreign  bodies :  they  must  assimilate  or 
reject  them.  No  League  of  Nations  is  strong  enough' 
to  grant  “national  autonomy”  to  a  splinter  driven  into 
a  living  body.  The  laws  of  physiology  are  stronger 
than  all  human  laws. 

Poland  was  slowly  and  peacefully  assimilating  her 
own  Jews,  when  the  Russian  Government  drove  into 
her  midst  the  masses  of  Russian  Jews,  like  a  splinter 
in  a  human  body.  When  these  foreign  masses  begin 
their  return  journey  to  Russia,  the  wound  will  cease 
to  fester  and  will  begin  to  heal.  In  the  meantime,  noth¬ 
ing  inflamed  this  wound,  so  much  as  the  universal  anti- 
Polish  campaign  on  account  of  alleged  Polish  pogroms. 
This  campaign  irritated  the  Poles  and  drove  them  into 
the  anti-Semitic  camp ;  this  campaign  encouraged  that 


part  of  the  Jews  inimical  to  Poland  to  look  abroad  for 
support  against  their  own  country ;  this  campaign  par¬ 
alyzed  on  both  sides  the  efforts  of  those  who  desired 
reconciliation  and  concord. 

Even  were  she  not  bound  by  the  clauses  of  the 
Minority  Treaty,  Poland  is  forced  to  settle  this  in¬ 
ternal  dispute,  and  heal  the  wound,  which  not  only 
enfeebles,  but  pains  her.  She  must  accomplish  this 
for  her  own  good  and  for  her  own  future.  Western 
Jews  who  have  become  an  organic  part  of  modern 
society,  and  have  great  influence  with  their  eastern 
brothers,  can  in  this  respect  render  priceless  service 
to  Poland,  as  well  as  to  their  Polish  co-believers. 

During  his  stay  in  Poland,  after  investigations  on 
the  spot,  Mr.  Henry  Morgenthau  constantly  en¬ 
deavored  to  act  as  a  conciliator,  to  encourage  confi¬ 
dence  and  concord,  and  to  stimulate  common  efforts 
toward  the  common  good.  The  Polish-Jewish  prob¬ 
lem  will  be  the  quicker  and  the  better  solved,  the 
more  numerous  the  followers  Mr.  Morgenthau  finds 
among  western  Jews:  people  of  good  will,  proclaim¬ 
ing,  not  hatred  and  boycott,  but  love  and  concord. 
Among  the  Polish  nation  are  not  lacking  people 
who  have  adopted  this  watchword. 

Then,  without  difficulty  and  outside  pressure,  as  a 
normal  result,  will  arise  in  Poland  one  class  of  citi¬ 
zens,  enjoying  equal  rights  and  rendering  equal 
duties,  as  desired  not  only  by  Mr.  Morgenthau,  the 
eminent  American  citizen  of  Jewish  faith,  but  also 
by  even  the  most  catholic  citizens  of  Poland. 


The  Polish  Treaty 

Convenant  That  Assures  Liberty  to  Minorities  in  Poland — M.  Clemenceau’s  Letter* 


When  the  principal  allied  and  associated  powers  signed 
the  German  Peace  Treaty  on  June  28,  1919,  they  also 
signed  another  important  pact  to  which  the  Polish  del¬ 
egates  had  just  affixed  their  signatures.  This  treaty  with 
Poland  was  the  first  of  a  series  of  formal  agreements 
binding  the  new  States  of  Eastern  Europe  to  maintain  the 
institutions  of  modern  political  freedom  under  the  aegis 
of  the  League  of  Nations.  Under  the  treaty  Poland 
agreed  to  protect  minorities  against  discrimination,  to 
assume  payment  of  such  a  share  of  the  Russian  debt  as 
should  be  assigned  to  her  by  the  Interallied  Commission, 
and  to  support  important  international  postal,  railway, 
telegraphic,  and  other  conventions  incidental  to  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  a  national  standing. 

A  statement  issued  at  Paris  on  June  30  by  Louis 
Marshall,  President  of  the  Combined  Jewish  Committees 
of  the  World,  contained  this  comment  on  the  treaty: 

“Nothing  thus  far  accomplished  by  the  Peace  Conference 
exceeds  in  importance  the  Polish  treaty  signed  at  Ver¬ 
sailles,  which  is  the  first  of  a  series  of  conventions  with 
the  new  States  of  Eastern  Europe  to  protect  all  racial, 
religious,  and  linguistic  minorities.  It  is  literally  a  charter 
of  liberty  and  the  final  act  of  emancipation  of  those  who 
for  centuries  have  been  bereft  of  elemental  human  rights. 
Had  nothing  else  been  achieved  in  Paris  than  the  pro¬ 
nouncement  that  henceforth  the  rights  of  minorities  are 
to  be  respected  and  safeguarded,  this  act  of  righteousness 
alone  would  have  evidenced  a  memorable  advance  in  the 
onward  march  of  civilization.  It  enshrines  in  the  law  of 
nations  the  eternal  principles  of  human  liberty  that  consti¬ 
tute  the  distinctive  features  of  the  American  Constitution.” 

Explanatory  Letter 

In  transmitting  this  do-cument  to  the  Polish  Govern¬ 
ment  on  June  24,  Premier  Clemenceau,  as  President  of 


the  Peace  Conference,  addressed  a  long  letter  to  Premier 
Paderewski  at  Warsaw  setting  forth  the  reasons  for  the 
various  conditions  laid  down  in  it.  The  letter  began  as 
follows: 

On  behalf  of  the  Supreme  Council  of  the  principal  allied 
and  associated  powers,  I  have  the  honor  of  communicating  to 
you  herewith,  in  its  final  form,  the  text  of  the  treaty  which, 
in  accordance  with  Article  93  of  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Ger¬ 
many,  Poland  will  be  asked  to  sign  on  the  occasion  of  the 
confirmation  of  her  recognition  as  an  independent  State  and 
of  the  transference  to  her  of  the  territories  included  in  the 
former  German  Empire  which  are  assigned  to  her  by  the 
said  treaty. 

The  principal  provisions  were  communicated  to  the  Polish 
delegation  in  Paris  in  May  last  and  were  subsequently  com¬ 
municated  direct  to  the  Polish  Government  through  the 
French  Minister  at  Warsaw.  The  council  since  has  had  the 
advantage  of  the  suggestions  which  you  were  good  enough 
to  convey  in  the  memorandum  of  June  16,  and  as  the  result 
of  a  study  of  the  suggestion  modifications  have  been  intro¬ 
duced  in  the  text  of  the  treaty.  The  council  believes  that 
it  will  be  found  that,  by  the  modification,  the  principal 
points  to  which  attention  was  drawn  in  your  memorandum 
have,  in  so  far  as  they  relate  to  specific  provisions  of  the 
treaty,  been  adequately  covered. 

In  formally  communicating  to  you  the  final  decision  of  the 
principal  allied  and  associated  powers  in  this  matter  I  should 
desire  to  take  this  opportunity  of  explaining  in  a  more  formal 
manner  than  has  hitherto  been  employed  the  conditions  by 
which  the  principal  allied  and  associated  powers  have  been 
guided  in  dealing  with  the  question. 

•Reprinted  from  the  New  York  Times  Current  History, 
August  1919. 

Guiding’  Principles 

One — In  the  first  place,  I  would  point  out  that  the  treaty 
does  not  constitute  any  fresh  departure.  It  has  for  long 
been  the  established  procedure  of  the  public  law  of  Europe 
that  when  a  State  is  created,  or  even  when  large  accessions 
of  territory  are  made  to  an  established  State,  the  joint  and 
formal  recognition  by  the  great  powers  should  be  accom¬ 
panied  by  the  requirement  that  such  State  should,  in  the 
form  of  a  binding  international  convention,  undertake  to 
comply  with  certain  principles  of  government.  This  prin- 


61 


ciple,  for  which  there  are  numerous  other  precedents,  re¬ 
ceived  the  explicit  sanction  when,  at  the  last  great  assembly 
of  European  powers — the  Congress  of  Berlin — the  sovereignty 
and  independence  of  Serbia,  Montenegro,  and  Rumania  were 
recognized.  It  is  desirable  to  recall  the  words  used  on  this 
occasion  by  the  British,  French,  Italian  and  German  pleni¬ 
potentiaries,  as  recorded  in  the  protocol  of  June  28,  1878. 

Premier  Clemenceau  here  quoted  from  Lord  Salisbury, 
William  Henry  Waddington,  French  plenipotentiary  at 
the  Berlin  Congress;  Prince  Bismarck,  Count  de  Launay. 
Italian  plenipotentiary,  and  Count  Andrassy  of  Austria- 
Hungary,  who  made  declarations  on  the  occasion  in 
question  emphasizing  the  necessity  of  establishing  the 
principle  of  religious  liberty.  Premier  Clemenceau  then 
resumed : 

Two — The  principal  allied  and  associated  powers  are  of 
the  opinion  that  they  would  be  false  to  the  responsibility 
which  rests  upon  them  if  on  this  occasion  they  departed 
from  what  has  become  an  established  tradition.  In  this 
connection  I  must  also  recall  to  your  consideration  the  fact 
that  it  is  through  the  endeavors  and  sacrifices  of  the  powers 
in  whose  name  I  am  addressing  you  that  the  Polish  Nation 
owes  the  recovery  of  its  independence.  It  is  by  their  decision 
that  sovereignty  is  being  re-established  over  the  territories 
in  question,  and  that  the  inhabitants  of  these  territories  are 
being  incorporated  in  the  Polish  Nation.  It  is  on  the  support 
which  these  powers  will  afford  to  the  League  of  Nations  that 
the  future  Poland  will,  to  a  large  extent,  depend  for  the 
secure  possession  of  these  territories. 

There  rests,  therefore,  upon  these  powers  an  obligation 
which  they  cannot  evade  to  secure  in  the  most  permanent 
and  solemn  form  guarantees  for  certain  essential  rights  which 
will  afford  to  the  inhabitants  the  necessary  protection,  what¬ 
ever  changes  may  take  place  in  the  internal  constitution  of 
the  Polish  State. 

It  is  in  accordance  with  this  obligation  that  clause  93  was 
inserted  in  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Germany.  This  clause 
relates  only  to  Poland,  but  a  similar  clause  applies 
the  same  principles  to  Czechoslovakia,  and  other 
clauses  have  been  inserted  in  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Austria, 
and  will  be  inserted  in  those  with  Hungary  and  Bulgaria, 
under  which  similar  obligations  will  be  undertaken  by  other 
States  which,  under  those  treaties,  receive  large  accessions 
of  territory. 

The  consideration  of  these  facts  would  be  sufficient  to 
show  that  by  the  requirement  addressed  to  Poland  at  the 
time  when  it  is  receiving  in  the  most  solemn  manner  the 
joint  recognition  of  the  re-establishment  of  its  sovereignty 
and  independence,  and  when  large  accessions  of  territory  are 
being  assigned  to  it,  no  doubt  is  thrown  upon  the  sincerity  of 
the  desire  of  the  Polish  Government  -and  the  Polish  Nation 
to  maintain  the  general  principles  of  justice  and  liberty. 
Any  such  doubt  would  be  far  from  the  intention  of  the  prin¬ 
cipal  allied  and  associated  powers. 

Three — It  is  indeed  true  that  the  new  treaty  differs  in  form 
from  earlier  conventions  dealing  with  similar  matters.  The 
change  of  form  is  a  necessary  consequence  and  an  essential 
part  of  the  new  system  of  international  relations  which  fs 
now  being  built  up  by  the  establishment  of  the  League  of 
Nations.  Under  the  older  system  the  guarantee  for  the 
execution  of  similar  provisions  was  vested  in  the  great 
powers.  Experience  has  shown  that  this  was  in  practice 
ineffective,  and  it  was  also  open  to  the  criticism  that  it  might 
give  to  the  great  powers,  either  individually  or  in  combina¬ 
tion,  a  right  to  interfere  in  the  internal  constitution  of  the 
States  affected,  which  could  be  used  for  political  purposes. 

Under  the  new  system  the  guarantee  is  intrusted  to  the 
League  of  Nations.  The  clauses  dealing  with  this  guarantee 
have  been  carefully  drafted,  so  as  to  make  it  clear  that 
Poland  will  not  be  in  any  way  under  the  tutelage  of  those 
powers  who  are  signatory  to  the  treaty. 

I  should  desire,  moreover,  to  point  out  to  you  that  provision 
has  been  inserted  in  the  treaty  by  which  disputes  arising  out 
of  its  provisions  may  be  brought  before  the  court  of  the 
League  of  Nations.  In  this  way  differences  which  might 
arise  will  be  removed  from  the  political  sphere  and  placed  in 
the  hand  of  a  judicial  court,  and  it  is  hoped  that  thereby 
an  impartial  decision  will  be  facilitated,  while  at  the  same 
time  any  danger  of  political  interferences  by  the  powers  in 
the  internal  affairs  of  Poland  will  be  avoided. 

Four — The  particular  provisions  to  which  Poland  and  the 
other  States  will  be  asked  to  adhere  differ  to  some  extent 
from  those  which  were  imposed  on  the  new  States  at  the 
Congress  of  Berlin.  But  the  obligations  imposed  upon  new 
States  seeking  recognition  have  at  all  times  varied  with  the 
particular  pircumstances. 

New  Provisions  Necessary 

Premier  Clemenceau  here  pointed  out  that  obligations 
with  regard  to  the  Belgian  provinces  were  undertaken 
by  the  Netherlands  in  1814,  when  those  provinces  were 
annexed;  that  when  the  Kingdom  of  Greece  was  estab¬ 
lished  it  was  determined  that  its  Government  could  be 
both  monarchical  and  constitutional,  and  that  Greece, 
when  she  annexed  Thessaly,  accepted  a  stipulation  that 
the  lives,  property,  honor,  religion,  and  customs  of  the 
inhabitants  should  be  respected  and  all  their  rights  pro¬ 
tected.  He  continued: 


The  situation  with  which  the  powers  have  now  to  deal  is 
new,  and  experience  has  shown  that  new  provisions  are 
necessary.  The  territories  now  being  transferred  both  to 
Poland  and  to  other  States  inevitably  include  a  large  popula¬ 
tion  speaking  languages  and  belonging  to  races  different 
from  that  of  the  people  with  whom  they  will  be  incorporated. 
Unfortunately,  the  races  have  been  estranged  by  long  years 
of  bitter  hostilities.  It  is  believed  that  these  populations 
will  be  more  easily  reconciled  to  their  new  position  if  they 
know  that  from  the  very  beginning  they  have  assured  protec¬ 
tion  and  adequate  guarantees  against  any  danger  of  unjust 
treatment  or  oppression.  The  very  knowledge  that  these 
guarantees  exist  will,  it  is  hoped,  materially  help  the  recon¬ 
ciliation  which  all  desire,  and  will,  indeed,  do  much  to  prevent 
the  necessity  of  its  enforcement.  , 

Five — To  turn  to  the  individual  clauses  of  the  present 
treaty,  Article  2  guarantees  to  all  inhabitants  those  element¬ 
ary  rights  which  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  secured  in  every 
civilized  State.  Clauses  3  to  6  are  designed  to  insure  that 
all  the  genuine  residents  in  the  territories  now  transferred 
to  Polish  sovereignty  shall  in  fact  be  assured  of  the  full 
privileges  of  citizenship.  Articles  7  and  8,  which  are  in 
accordance  with  precedent,  provide  against  any  discrimina¬ 
tion  against  those  Polish  citizens  who  by  their  re¬ 
ligion,  their  language,  or  by  their  race  differ  from 
the  large  mass  of  the  Polish  population.  It  is  under¬ 
stood  that,  far  from  raising  any  objection  to  the  manner  of 
the  articles,  the  Polish  Government  have  already,  of  their 
own  accord,  declared  their  firm  intention  of  basing  their 
institutions  on  the  cardinal  principles  enunciated  therein. 

Protection  for  Jews 

The  following  articles  are  of  a  rather  different  nature, 
in  that  they  provide  special  privileges  to  certain  group  of 
these  minorities:  *  *  * 

Six — Clauses  10  and  12  deal  specifically  with  the  Jewish 
citizens  of  Poland.  The  information  at  the  disposal  of  the 
principal  allied  and  associated  powers  as  to  the  existing 
relations  between  the  Jews  and  the  other  Polish  citizens  has 
led  them  to  the  conclusion  that,  in  view  of  the  historical 
development  of  the  Jewish  question  and  the  great  animosity 
aroused  by  it,  special  protection  fs  necessary  for  the  Jews 
of  Poland.  These  clauses  have  been  limited  to  the  minimum 
which  seems  necessary  under  the  circumstances  of  the  present 
day,  viz.,  the  maintenance  of  Jewish  schools  and  the  protec¬ 
tion  of  the  Jews  in  the  religious  observance  of  their  Sabbath. 

It  is  believed  that  these  stipulations  will  not  create  any 
obstacle  to  the  political  unity  of  Poland.  They  do  not 
constitute  any  recognition  of  the  Jews  as  a  separate  political 
community  within  the  Polish  State.  The  educational  provi¬ 
sions  contain  nothing  beyond  what  is  in  fact  provided  in  the 
educational  institutions  of  many  highly  organized  modern 
States.  There  is  nothing  inconsistent  with  the  sovereignty 
of  the  State  in  recognizing  and  supporting  schools  in  which 
children  shall  be  brought  up  in  the  religious  influences  to 
which  they  are  accustomed  in  their  home.  Ample  safeguards 
against  any  use  of  non-Polish  language  to  encourage  a  spirit 
of  national  separation  have  been  provided  in  the  express 
acknowledgment  that  the  provisions  of  this  treaty  do  not 
prevent  the  Polish  State  from  making  the  Polish  language 
obligatory  in  all  its  schools  and  educational  institutions. 

In  Part  7  of  his  letter  Premier  Clemenceau  dealt  with 
the  economic  clauses  of  the  treaty,  such  aS  freedom  of 
transit  and  Poland’s  adhesion  to  certain  international 
conventions,  and  pointed  out  that  the  powers  had  not 
been  actuated  by  any  desire  to  secure  special  commercial 
advantages  for  themselves.  He  added: 

In  conclusion,  I  desire  to  express  to  you  on  behalf  of  the 
allied  and  associated  powers  the  very  sincere  satisfaction 
which  they  feel  at  the  re-establishment  of  Poland  as  an 
important  State.  They  cordially  welcome  the  Polish  Nation 
on  its  re-entry  into  the  family  of  nations.  They  recall  the 
great  services  which  the  ancient  Kingdom  of  Poland  ren¬ 
dered  to  Europe  both  in  public  affairs  and  by  its  contribu¬ 
tions  to  the  progress  of  mankind,  which  is  the  common  work 
of  all  civilized  nations.  They  believe  that  the  voice  of 
Poland  will  add  to  the  wisdom  of  their  common  deliberations 
in  the  cause  of  peace  and  harmony,  that  its  influence  will 
he  used  to  further  the  soirt  of  liberty  and  justice  both  in 
internal  and  external  affairs,  and  that  thereby  it  will  help  in 
the  work  of  reconciliation  between  the  nations  which,  with 
the  conclusion  of  peace,  will  be  the  common  task  of  humanity. 

The  text  of  the  treaty  itself,  signed  by  Poland  and  the 
allied  and  associated  powers  on  June  28,  1919,  is  given  in 
full  on  the  next  four  pages. 

TEXT  OP  TREATY  SIGNED  BY  POLAND 

The  United  States  of  America,  the  British  Empire,  Prance. 
Italy,  and  Japan,  the  principal  allied  and  associated  powers, 
on  the  one  hand;  and  Poland,  on  the  other  hand: 

WHEREAS,  The  allied  and  associated  powers  have,  by  the 
success  of  their  arms,  restored  to  the  Polish  Nation  the 
independence  of  which  it  had  been  unjustly  deprived;  and 

WHEREAS,  By  the  proclamation  of  March  30,  1917,  the 
Government  of  Russia  assented  to  the  re-establishment  of  an 
independent  Polish  State;  and, 

WHEREAS,  The  Polish  State,  which  now.  in  fact,  exer¬ 
cises  sovereignty  over  those  portions  of  the  former  Russian 


62 


Empire  which  are  inhabited  by  a  majority  of  Poles,  has  al¬ 
ready  been  recognized  as  a  sovereign  and  important  State  by 
the  principal  allied  and  associated  powers;  and 

WHEREAS,  Under  the  treaty  of  peace  concluded  with 
Germany  by  the  allied  and  associated  powers,  a  treaty  of 
which  Poland  is  a  signatory,  certain  portions  of  the  former 
German  Empire  will  be  incorporated  in  the  territory  of  Po¬ 
land;  and 

WHEREAS,  Under  the  terms  of  the  said  treaty  of  peace, 
the  boundaries  of  Poland  not  already  laid  down  are  to  be 
subsequently  determined  by  the  principal  allied  and  associated 
powers; 

The  United  States  of  America,  the  British  Empire,  France, 
Italy,  and  Japan,  on  the  one  hand,  confirming  their  recognition 
of  the  Polish  State,  constituted  within  the  said  limits  as  a 
sovereign  and  independent  member  of  the  family  of  nations 
and  being  anxious  to  insure  the  execution  of  the  provisions 
of  Article  93  of  the  said  treaty  of  peace  with  Germany; 

Poland,  on  the  other  hand,  desiring  to  conform  her  institu¬ 
tions  to  the  principles  of  liberty  and  justice,  and  to  give 
a  sure  guarantee  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  territory  over 
which  she  assumed  sovereignty;  for  this  purpose  the  follow¬ 
ing  representatives  of  the  high  contracting  parties: 

The  President  of  the  United  States  of  America;  his  Majesty 
the  King  of  the  United  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain  and  Ire¬ 
land  and  of  the  British  dominions  beyond  the  seas.  Emperor 
of  India;  the  President  of  the  French  Republic;  his  Majesty 
the  King  of  Italy;  his  Majesty  the  Emperor  of  Japan,  and 
the  President  of  the  Polish  Republic,  after  having  exchanged 
their  full  powers,  found  in  good  and  due  form,  have  agreed 
as  follows: 

CHAPTER  I. 

ARTICLE  1 — Poland  undertakes  that  the  stipulations  con¬ 
tained  in  Articles  2  and  8  of  this  chapter  shall  be  recognized 
as  fundamental  law,  and  that  no  law,  regulation,  or  official 
action  shall  conflict  or  interfere  with  these  stipulations,  nor 
shall  any  law,  regulation,  or  official  action  prevail  over  them. 

ARTICLE  2 — Poland  undertakes  to  assure  full  and  complete 
protection  to  life  and  liberty  to  all  inhabitants  of  Poland, 
without  distinction  of  birth,  nationality,  language,  race,  or 
religion. 

All  inhabitants  of  Poland  shall  be  entitled  to  the  free 
exercise,  whether  public  or  private,  of  any  creed,  religion,  or 
belief  whose  practices  are  not  inconsistent  with  public  order 
or  public  morals. 

ARTICLE  3 — Poland  admits  and  declares  to  be  Polish 
nationals  ipso  facto  Hungarian  or  Russian  nationals  habit¬ 
ually  resident,  at  the  date  of  the  coming  into  force  of  the 
present  treaty,  in  territory  which  is  or  may  be  recognized  as 
forming  nart  of  Poland  under  the  treaties  with  Germany, 
Austria,  Hungary,  or  Russia,  respectively,  but  subject  to  any 
provisions  in  the  said  treaties  relating  to  persons  who  became 
resident  in  such  territory  after  a  specified  date. 

Nevertheless,  the  persons  referred  to  above  who  are  over 
12  years  of  age  will  be  entitled  under  the  conditions  contained 
in  the  said  treaties  to  opt  for  any  other  nationality  which 
may  be  open  to  them.  Option  by  a  husband  will  cover  his 
wife  and  option  by  parents  will  cover  their  children  under 
18  years  of  age. 

Persons  who  have  exercised  the  above  right  to  option  must, 
except  where  it  is  otherwise  provided  in  the  treaty  of  peace 
with  Germany,  transfer  within  the  succeeding  twelve  months 
their  place  of  residence  to  the  State  for  which  they  have 
opted.  They  will  be  entitled  to  retain  their  immovable 
property  in  Polish  territory.  They  may  carry  with  them 
their  movable  property  of  every  description.  Np  export  duties 
may  be  imposed  upon  them  in  connection  with  the  removal 
of  such  property. 

ARTICLE  4 — Poland  admits  and  declares  to  be  Polish 
nationals,  ipso  facto  and  without  the  requirement  of  any 
formality,  persons  of  German,  Austrian,  Hungarian,  or  Rus¬ 
sian  nationality  who  were  born  in  the  said  territory  of  parents 
habitually  resident  there,  even  if  at  the  date  of  the  coming 
into  force  of  the  present  treaty  they  are  not  themselves 
habitually  resident  there. 

Nevertheless,  within  two  years  after  the  coming  into  force 
of  the  present  treaty,  these  persons  may  make  a  declaration 
before  the  competent  Polish  authorities  in  the  country  in 
which  they  are  resident,  stating  that  they  abandon  Polish 
nationality,  and  they  will  then  cease  to  be  considered  as 
Polish  nationals.  In  this  connection  a  declaration  by  a 
husband  will  cover  his  wife,  and  a  declaration  by  parents 
will  cover  their  children  under  18  years  of  age. 

ARTICLE  5 — Poland  undertakes  to  put  no  hindrance  in  the 
way  of  the  exercise  of  the  right  which  the  persons  concerned 
have,  under  the  treaties,  concluded  or  to  be  concluded  by  the 
allied  and  associated  powers  with  Germany,  Austria,  Hungary, 
or  Russia,  to  choose  whether  or  not  they  will  acquire  Polish 
nationality. 

ARTICLE  6 — All  persons  born  in  Polish  territory  who  are 
not  born  nationals  of  another  State  shall  ipso  facto  become 
Polish  nationals. 

ARTICLE  7 — -All  Polish  nationals  shall  be  equal  before  the 
law  and  shall  enjoy  the  same  civil  and  political  rights  with¬ 
out  distinction  as  to  race,  language,  or  religion. 

Differences  of  religion,  creed,  or  confession  shall  not  prej¬ 
udice  any  Polish  national  in  matters  relating  to  the  en¬ 


joyment  of  civil  or  political  rights,  as  for  admission  to  public 
employments,  functions,  and  honors,  or  the  exercise  of  pro¬ 
fessions  and  industries. 

No  restriction  shall  be  imposed  on  the  free  use  by  any 
Polish  national  of  any  language  in  private  intercourse,  in 
commerce,  in  religion,  in  the  press,  or  in  publications  of  any 
kind,  or  at  public  meetings. 

Notwithstanding  any  establishment  by  the  Polish  Govern¬ 
ment  of  an  official  language,  adequate  facilities  shall  be  given 
to  Polish  nationals  of  non-Polish  speech  for  the  use  of  their 
language,  either  orally  or  in  writing,  before  the  courts. 

ARTICLE  8 — Polish  nationals  who  belong  to  racial,  relig¬ 
ious,  or  linguistic  minorities  shall  enjoy  the  same  treatment 
and  security  in  law  and  in  fact  as  the  Polish  nationals.  In 
particular  they  shall  have  an  equal  right  to  establish,  manage, 
and  control  at  their  own  expense  charitable,  religious,  and 
social  institutions,  schools  and  other  educational  establish¬ 
ments,  with  the  right  to  use  their  own  language  and  to 
exercise  their  religion  freely  therein. 

ARTICLE  9 — Poland  will  provide,  in  the  public  educational 
system  in  towns  and  districts  in  which  a  considerable  propor¬ 
tion  of  Polish  nationals  of  other  than  Polish  speech  are 
residents,  adequate  facilities  for  insuring  that  in  the  primary 
schools  instruction  shall  .  be  gi.ven  to  the  children  of  such 
Polish  nationals  through  the  medium  of  their  own  language. 
This  provision  shall  not  prevent  the  Polish  Government  from 
making  the  teaching  of  the  Polish  language  obligatory  in 
the  said  schools. 

In  towns  and  districts  where  there  is  a  considerable 
proportion  of  Polish  nationals  belonging  to  racial,  religious, 
or  linguistic  minorities,  these  minorities  shall  be  assured  an 
equitable  share  in  the  enjoyment  and  application  of  the 
sums  which  may  be  provided  out  of  public  funds  under  the 
State,  municipal,  or  other  budgets,  for  educational,  religious, 
or  charitable  purposes. 

The  provisions  of  this  article  shall  apply  to  Polish  citizens 
of.  German  speech  only  in  that  part  of  Poland  which  was 
German  territory  on  Auust  1,  1914. 

ARTICLE  10 — Educational  committees  appointed  locally  by 
the  Jewish  communities  of  Poland  will,  subject  to  the  general 
control  of  the  State,  provide  for  the  distribution  of  the 
proportional  share  of  public  funds  allocated  to  Jewish  schools 
i  naccordance  with  Article  9,  and  for  the  organization  and 
management  of  these  schools. 

The  provision  of  Article  9  concerning  the  use  of  language 
in  schools  shall  apply  to  these  schools. 

ARTICLE  11 — Jews  shall  not  be  compelled  to  perform  any 
act  which  constitutes  a  violation  of  their  Sabbath,  nor  shall 
they  be  placed  under  any  disability  by  reason  of  their  refusal 
to  attend  courts  of  law  or  to  perform  any  legal  business  on 
their  Sabbath.  This  provision,  however,  shall  not  exempt 
Jews  from  such  obligations  as  shall  be  imposed  upon  all  other 
Polish  citizens  for  the  necessary  purposes  of  military  service, 
national  defense,  or  the  preservation  of  public  order. 

Poland  declares  her  intention  to  refrain  from  ordering  or 
permitting  elections,  whether  general  or  local,  to  be  held  on  a 
Saturday,  nor  will  registration  for  electoral  or  other  purposes 
be  compelled  to  be  performed  on  a  Saturday. 

ARTICLE  12 — Poland  agrees  that  the  stipulations  in  the 
foregoing  articles,  so  far  as  they  affect  persons  belonging  to 
racial,  religious,  or  linguistic  minorities,  constitute  obliga¬ 
tions  of  international  concern,  and  shall  be  placed  under  the 
guarantee  of  the  League  of  Nations.  They  shall  not  be 
modified  without  the  assent  of  a  majority  of  the  Council  of 
the  League  of  Nations.  The  United  States,  the  British  Empire, 
France,  Italy,  and  Japan  hereby  agree  not  to  withhold  their 
assent  from  any  modification  in  these  articles  which  is  in 
due  form  assented  to  by  a  majority  of  the  Council  of  the 
League  of  Nations. 

Poland  agrees  that  any  member  of  the  Council  of  the 
League  of  Nations  shall  have  the  right  to  bring  to  the  atten¬ 
tion  of  the  Council  any  infraction,  or  any  danger  of  infrac¬ 
tion,  of  any  of  these  obligations,  and  that  the  Council  may 
thereupon  take  such  action  and  give  such  direction  as  it  may 
deem  proper'  and  effective  in  the  circumstances. 

Poland  further  agrees  that  any  difference  of  opinion  as  to 
question  of  law  or  fact  arising  out  of  these  articles,  between 
the  Polish  Government  and  any  of  the  principal  allied  and 
associated  powers,  or  any  other  power  a  member  of  the 


63 


Council  of  the  League  of  Nations,  shall  be  held  to  be  a 
dispute  of  an  international  character  under  Article  14  of  the 
Covenant  of  the  League  of  Nations.  The  Polish  Government 
hereby  consents  that  any  such  dispute  shall,  if  the  other 
party  thereof  demands,  be  referred  to  the  Permanent  Court 
of  International  Justice.  The  decision  of  the  Permanent 
Court  shall  be  final  and  shall  'have  the  same  force  and  effect 
as  an  award  under  Article  13  of  the  covenant. 

CHAPTER  II. 

ARTICLE  13 — Each  of  the  principal  allied  and  associated 
powers,  on  the  one  part,  and  Poland  on  the  other  shall  be  at 
liberty  to  appoint  diplomatic  representatives  to  reside  in  their 
respective  capitals,  as  well  as  Consul  Generals,  Consuls, 
Vice  Consuls,  and  Consular  Agents,  to  reside  in  the  towns 
and  ports  of  their  respective  territories. 

Consul  Generals,  Consuls,  Vice  Consuls,  and  Consular 

Agents,  however,  shall  not  enter  upon  their  duties  until 
they  have  been  admitted  in  the  usual  manner  by  the  Gov¬ 
ern!  ent  in  the  territory  of  which  they  are  stationed. 

Consul  Generals,  Consuls,  Vice  Consuls,  and  Consular 

Agents  shall  enjoy  all  the  facilities,  privileges,  exemptions, 
and  immunities  of  every  kind  which  are  or  shall  be  granted 
to  Consular  officers  of  the  most  favored  nation. 

ARTICLE  14 — Pending  the  establishment  of  a  permanent 
tariff  by  the  Polish  Government  goods  originating  in  the  allied 
and  associated  States  shall  not  be  subject  to  any  higher  duties 
on  importation  into  Poland  than  the  most  favorable  rates 
of  duty  applicable  to  goods  of  the  same  kind  under  either 
the  German,  Austro-Hungarian,  or  Russian  customs  tariffs  on 
July  1,  1914. 

ARTICLE  15 — Poland  undertakes  to  make  no  treaty,  con¬ 
vention,  or  arrangement,  and  to  take  no  other  action,  which 
will  prevent  her  from  joining  in  any  general  agreement  for 
the  equitable  treatment  of  the  commerce  of  other  States  that 
may  be  concluded  under  the  auspices  of  the  League  of 
Nations  within  five  years  from  the  coming  into  force  of  the 
present  treaty. 

Poland  also  undertakes  to  extend  to  all  the  allied  and  as¬ 
sociated  States  any  favors  or  privileges  in  customs  matters 
which  they  may  grant  during  the  same  period  of  five  years 
to  any  State  with  which,  since  August,  1914,  the  Allies  have 
been  at  war,  or  to  any  State  which  may  have  concluded  with 
Austria  special  customs  arrangements  as  provided  for  in 
the  treaty  of  peace  to  be  concluded  with  Austria. 

ARTICLE  16 — Pending  the  conclusion  of  the  general  agree¬ 
ment  referred  to  above,  Poland  undertakes  to  treat  on  the 
same  footing  as  national  vessels,  or  vessels  of  the  most  fa¬ 
vored  nation,  the  vessels  of  all  the  allied  and  associated 
States  which  accord  similar  treatment  to  Polish  vessels. 

By  way  of  exception  from  this  provision,  the  right  of 
Poland  or  any  other  allied  or  associated  State  to  confine  her 
maritime  coasting  trade  to  national  vessels  is  expressly 
reserved. 

ARTICLE  17 — Pending  the  conclusion,  under  the  auspices 
of  the  League  of  Nations,  of  a  general  convention  to  secure 
and  maintain  freedom  of  communications  and  of  transit, 
Poland  undertakes  to  accord  freedom  of  transit  of  persons, 
goods,  vessels,  carriage^,  wagons,  and  mails  in  transit  to  or 
from  any  allied  or  associated  State  over  Polish  territory, 
including  territorial  waters,  and  to  treat  them  at  least  as 
favorably  as  the  persons,  goods,  vessels,  carriages,  wagons, 
and  mails  respectively  of  Polish  or  of  any  other  more  favored 
nationality,  origin,  importation,  or  ownership,  as  regards 
facilities,  charges,  restrictions,  and  all  other  matters. 

All  charges  imposed  in  Poland  on  such  traffic  in  transit 
shall  be  reasonable,  having  regard  to  the  conditions  of  the 
traffic  Goods  in  transit  shall  be  exempt  from  all  customs 
or  other  duties.  Tariffs  for  transit  traffic  across  Poland  and 
tariffs  between  Poland  and  any  allied  or  associated  power, 
involving  through  tickets  or  waybills,  shall  be  established  at 
the  request  of  that  allied  or  associated  power. 

Freedom  of  transit  will  extend  to  postal  telegraphic  and 
telephonic  services. 

It  is  agreed  that  no  allied  or  associated  power  can  claim 
the  benefit  of  these  provisions  on  behalf  of  any  part  of  its 
territory  in  which  reciprocal  treatment  is  not  accorded  with 
respect  to  the  same  subject  matter. 

If  within  a  period  of  five  years  from  the  coming  into  force 
of  the  present  treaty  no  general  convention  as  aforesaid 
shall  have  been  concluded  under  the  auspices  of  the  League 
of  Nations.  Poland  shall  be  at  liberty  at  any  time  thereafter 
to  give  twelve  months’  notice  to  the  Secretary  General  of 
the  League  of  Nations  to  terminate  obligations  of  this  article. 

ARTICLE  18. — Pending  the  conclusion  of  a  general  con¬ 
vention  on  the  international  regime  of  waterways,  Poland 
undertakes  to  apply  to  the  river  system  of  the  Vistula  (in¬ 
cluding  the  Bug  and  the  Narest)  the  regime  applicable  to 
international  waterways  set  out  in  Articles  332  to  337  of 
the  treaty  of  peace  with  Germany. 

ARTICLE  19 — Poland  undertakes  to  adhere,  within  twelve 
months  of  the  coming  into  force  of  the  present  treaty,  to  the 
international  conventions  specified  in  Annex  I. 

Poland  undertakes  to  adhere  to  any  new  convention,  con¬ 
cluded  with  the  approval  of  the  Council  of  the  League  of 
Nations  within  five  years  of  the  coming  into  force  of  the 
present  treaty,  to  replace  any  of  the  international  instruments 
specified  in  Annex  I. 

The  Polish  Government  undertakes  within  twelve  months 
to  notify  the  Secretary  General  of  the  League  of  Nations 


whether  or  not  Poland  desires  to  adhere  to  either  or  both 
of  the  international  conventions  specified  in  Annex  II. 

Until  Poland  has  adhered  to  the  two  conventions  last 
specified  in  Annex  I.  she  agrees,  on  condition  of  reciprocity, 
to  protect  by  effective  measures  the  industrial,  literary  and 
artistic  property  of  nationals  of  the  allied  and  associated 
States.  In  the  case  of  any  allied  or  associated  State  not  ad¬ 
hering  to  the  said  conventions,  Poland  agrees  to  continue 
to  afford  such  effective  protection  on  the  same  conditions  until 
the  conclusion  of  a  special  bilateral  treaty  or  agreement  for 
that  purpose  with  such  allied  or  associated  State. 

Pending  her  adhesion  to  the  other  conventions  specified  in 
Annex  I.,  Poland  will  secure  to  the  nationals  of  the  allied 
and  associated  powers  the  advantages  to  which  they  would 
be  entitled  under  the  said  conventions. 

Poland  further  agrees,  on  condition  of  reciprocity,  to  recog¬ 
nize  and  protect  all  rights  in  any  industrial,  literary,  or  ar¬ 
tistic  property  belonging  to  the  nationals  of  the  allied  and 
associated  States  now  in  force  or  which,  but  for  the  war, 
would  have  been  in  force  in  any  part  of  her  territories  before 
their  transfer  to  Poland.  For  such  purposes  they  will  accord 
the  extensions  of  time  agreed  to  in  Articles  307  and  308  of 
the  treaty  with  Germany. 

ANNEX  I. 

Telegraphic  and  Radio-Telegraphic  Conventions 

International  Telegraphic  Convention  signed  at  St.  Peters- 
bury  July  10-22,  1875. 

Regulations  and  tariffs  drawn  up  by  the  International  Tel¬ 
egraph  Conference  signed  at  Lisbon  June  11,  1908. 

International  Radio-Telegraphic  Convention,  July  5,  1912. 

Railway  Conventions 

Conventions  and  arrangements  signed  at  Berne  on  Oct.  14. 
1890,  Sept.  20,  1893,  July  16.  1895,  and  Sept.  19,  1906,  and  the 
current  supplementary  provisions  made  under  those  conven¬ 
tions. 

Agreement  on  May  15,  1886,  regarding  the  sealing  of  rail¬ 
way  trucks  subject  to  custom  inspections,  and  protocol  of 
May  18,  1907. 

Agreement  of  May  15,  1886,  regarding  the  technical  stand¬ 
ardization  of  railways,  as  modified  on  May  18,  1907. 

Sanitary  Convention 

Convention  of  Dec.  3,  1903. 

Other  Conventions 

Convention  of  Sept.  26.  1906,  for  the  suppression  of  night 
work  for  women. 

Convention  of  Sept.  26.  1906,  for  the  suppression  of  the 
use  of  white  phosphorus  in  the  manufacture  of  matches. 

Conventions  of  May  18,  1904,  and  May  4,  1910,  regarding  the 
suppression  of  the  white  slave  traffic. 

Convention  of  May  4,  1910,  regarding  the  suppression  of 
obscene  publications. 

International  conventions  of  Paris  of  March  20,  1883,  as 
revised  at  Washington  in  1911,  for  the  protection  of  industrial 
property. 

International  convention  of  Sept.  9,  1886,  revised  at  Berlin 
on  Nov.  13,  1908,  and  completed  by  the  additional  protocol 
signed  at  Berne  on  March  20,  1914,  for  the  protection  of 
literary  and  artistic  works. 

ANNEX  II. 

Agreement  of  Madrid  of  April  14.  1891,  for  the  prevention 
of  false  indications  of  origin  on  goods,  revised  at  Washington 
in  191],  and  agreement  of  Madrid  of  April  14,  1891,  for  the 
international  registration  of  trade  marks,  revised  at  Washing¬ 
ton  in  1911. 

ARTICLE  20 — All  rights*  and  privileges  accorded  by  the 
foregoing  articles  to  the  allied  and  associated  States  shall  be 
accorded  equally  to  all  States  members  of  the  League  of 
Nations. 

The  present  treaty,  of  which  the  French  and  English  texts 
are  both  authentic,  shall  be  ratified.  It  shall  come  into  force 
at  the  same  time  as  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Germany. 

The  deposit  of  ratifications  shall  be  made  at  Paris. 

Powers  of  w'liich  the  seat  of  the  Government  is  outside 
Europe  will  be  entitled  merely  to  inform  the  Government  of 
the  French  Republic  through  their  diplomatic  representative 
at  Paris  that  their  ratification  has  been  given.  In  that  case 
they  must  transmit  the  instrument  of  ratification  as  soon 
as  possible. 

A  proc&s-verbal  of  the  deposit  of  ratifications  will  be  drawn 

up. 

The  French  Government  will  transmit  to  all  the  signatory 
powers  a  certified  copy  of  the  proces-verbal  of  the  deposit  of 
ratifications. 

ARTICLE  21 — Poland  agrees  to  assume  responsibility  for 
such  proportion  of  the  Russian  public  debt  and  other  Russian 
public  liabilities  of  any  kind  as  may  be  assigned  to  her  under 
a  special  convention  between  the  principal  allied  and  asso¬ 
ciated  powers  on  the  one  hand  and  Poland  on  the  other,  to 
be  prepared  by  a  commission  appointed  by  the  above  States. 
In  the  event  of  the  commission  not  arriving  at  an  agreement, 
the  point  at  issue  shall  be  referred  for  immediate  arbitration 
to  the  League  of  Nations. 

In  faith  whereof  the  above-named  plenipotentiaries  have 
signed  the  present  treaty. 

Done  at  Versailles,  (June  28,  1919),  in  a  single  copy  which 
will  remain  deposited  in  the  archives  of  the  French  Republic, 
and  of  which  authenticated  copies  will  be  transmitted  to  each 
of  the  signatory  powers. 


64 


■ 


THE  JEWS  OF  AMERICA  SHOULD  ANSWER 
IF  THIS  IS  TO  BE  CONSIDERED  THEIR  ATTI¬ 
TUDE  TOWARD  A  POLAND  RAVAGED  BY 
SIX  YEARS  OF  WAR  AND  ACKNOWLEDGED 
BY  THE  CHRISTIAN  WORLD  AS  HAVING 
SAVED  EUROPE  FROM  BOLSHEVISM. 


Striking  Back  at  Poland. 

Editor  Globe: — The  Polish  govern¬ 
ment  will  soon  make  an  attempt  to 
raise  $50,000,000  in  the  United  States. 
American  Jewry  must  see  to  it  that 
the  Polish  loan  drive  fails.  It  is  the 
duty  of  every  Jew  worthy  of  the  name 
to  arouse  the  American  people  to  a 
state  of  mind  that  will  make  it  im¬ 
possible  for  any  European  govern¬ 
ment  to  raise  money  in  this  country 
unless  that  government  gives  ade¬ 
quate  guarantees  to  extend  civil  lib¬ 
erty  and  racial  equality  to  all  people 
within  its  borders.  Poland  has  failed 
to  do  this  by  her  Jewish  people. 
American  Jewry  must  retaliate  in  the 
only  way  it  can  to  hit  the  Polish  gov¬ 
ernment. 

I  suggest  that  an  organization  of 
Jews,  drawn  from  every  walk  in  life, 
regardless  of  political  affiliation,  be 
formed.  This  body  to  direct  its  ener¬ 
gies  toward  defeating  the  Polish 
money  drives,  boycotting  Polish  trade, 
and  creating  an  anti-Polish  govern¬ 
ment  feeling  in  the  United  States. 

There  are  some  who  will  say  this 
course  is  dangerous,  for  it  will  result 
in  even  greater  outrages  against  our 
people  in  Poland.  No,  Poland  has 
been  murdering  Jews  because  there 
have  been  none  to  say  nay.  If  we 
strike  back  the  pogroms  in  Poland 
will  cease.  Poland  needs  money,  food, 
and  clothing.  There  is  only  one  coun¬ 
try  from  which  Poland  can  get  these 
things,  and  that  country  happens  to 
be  the  land  where  the  Jews  are  in¬ 
trenched  powerfully  enough  to  smash 
Poland  where  it  will  hurt  most. 

ALEXANDER  FISHMAN. 

Brooklyn,  Oct.  15. 


— The  New  York  Globe - October  20,  1920 


“It  is  giving  the  Jews  very  little  real 
assistance  to  single  out,  as  is  some¬ 
times  done,  for  reprobation  and  protest, 
the  country  where  they  have  perhaps 
suffered  least.” 

— Sir  H.  RUMBOLD 

British  Minister  to  Poland 


